On August 8, disperse dyes saw another broad price increase, with Disperse Black 300% approaching RMB 30,000 per ton. This followed two rounds of price adjustments in July. The driver is not demand recovery—traditional off-season has dyeing mills running at only about 60% capacity—but cost pressure: the key intermediate reductive material surged from RMB 25,000/ton at end-2025 to RMB 100,000/ton by mid-2026, a nearly 300% jump in months, while H acid supply gap has exceeded 10% for years. Cost rigidity and supply constraints are pushing the entire printing and dyeing chain to a critical turning point.
Cost Side: Raw Material Surge and Supply Rigidity Form a Double Squeeze
The direct driver of this dye price hike is the runaway cost of upstream intermediates. Reductive material (2-amino-4-acetamidoanisole) is irreplaceable for producing black, blue, and purple disperse dyes. Its price quadrupled in six months, directly eroding dye manufacturers' profit margins. More critically, domestic compliant reductive material capacity is only 50,000-60,000 tons, highly concentrated among three companies: Zhejiang Longsheng, Runtu, and Ningxia Zhongsheng New Technology. Industry expansion space is minimal, and supply elasticity is extremely weak. Any slight demand uptick will quickly push prices higher, providing strong support for sustained dye price increases.
H acid, the core intermediate for reactive dyes, is also in tight balance. Its production involves sulfonation, nitration, and other highly polluting processes. Under tightening environmental regulations, outdated capacity is being phased out, leaving effective domestic capacity below 60,000 tons, with a persistent supply gap exceeding 10%. The simultaneous price hikes of both reductive material and H acid create a dual cost squeeze, making dye price increases almost inevitable. For buyers, this means dye prices are unlikely to fall soon, and cost management must be planned ahead.
Midstream: Dyeing Mills' Bargaining Power Weakens, Struggling in Off-Season
Dye costs have nearly doubled, directly pressuring printing and dyeing factories, but their position is passive. The off-season is prominent: average operating rate across Chinese dyeing mills is only about 60%, with few bulk orders, mostly sampling and small trial orders, limiting revenue. Meanwhile, the industry's supply-demand logic has fundamentally changed: conventional fabrics are increasingly commoditized, small orders are consolidating, and order resources are concentrating among top customers. Dyeing mills find it hard to unilaterally raise processing fees for major clients.
Worse, most dyeing mills have highly homogeneous production processes and lack differentiated competitiveness, shifting the market to a buyer's market. Only a few high-end mills with stable quality and premium clientele can independently raise processing fees. Facing rising dye costs, some mills have issued fee increase notices, but weak off-season demand and low customer acceptance hinder cost pass-through. Most small and medium mills must absorb the difference, making sustained losses unsustainable.
Peak Season Approaching: Cost Transmission Enters Critical Window
In the short term, downstream fabric and apparel companies have not yet felt the impact of higher dyeing fees due to scarce orders. Most mills prioritize retaining core customers and have not aggressively raised fees. But low-price absorption cannot last. In September-October, the traditional stocking season will bring concentrated orders from apparel and foreign trade, and the accumulated cost pressure from dyes and intermediates will transmit downstream. At that point, comprehensive dyeing fee increases will become common, raising costs across the textile chain—from fabric mills to apparel brands and ultimately consumers.
For buyers, now is the key window to lock in long-term supply agreements. For foreign trade companies, it is essential to include cost adjustment clauses in quotations to avoid margin erosion during peak season.