MDI Import and Export Data to 2025, with a 2026 Monthly Update to August: EU Imports Up 37% and the US Lane Reverses
Summary. EU27 imports of isocyanates from outside the bloc reached 130,635 tonnes in the twelve months to August 2026, 37.0% more than the 95,354 tonnes of the preceding twelve months, while the average customs unit value fell 13.4% to 2,164 EUR per tonne. Four origins supplied 97.6% of the book: China 42,361 tonnes at 2,316 EUR/t, Korea 35,051 at 1,759, the United States 31,123 at 2,352 and Saudi Arabia 19,004 at 1,602. The US line is the swing: it was 6,630 tonnes a year earlier, and almost all of it arrived between September 2025 and January 2026, then stopped. Exports fell 30.5% to 192,043 tonnes, so the EU’s net surplus in this tariff line collapsed from 180,846 to 61,408 tonnes, and on the US lane the EU went from net exporter by 24,109 tonnes to net importer by 15,348. CN 29291000 covers MDI, TDI and the other isocyanates together; the grade mix inside that code is the main reason the unit values below are not a product price.
Data updated: 2026-10-20
Latest 12 months: monthly volumes and unit values
The table covers September 2025 to August 2026, the most recent twelve complete months in Eurostat Comext dataset DS-045409, which carries EU27 extra-EU trade in CN 29291000 and was retrieved on 20 October 2026. Extra-EU means the partner aggregate EXT_EU27_2020, so shipments between member states are excluded throughout. Unit values are customs value divided by net weight; they include freight and insurance to the EU border.
| Month | Imports (t) | Import value (EUR m) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Exports (t) | Export unit value (EUR/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09 | 12,318 | 23.7 | 1,926 | 10,660 | 2,974 |
| 2025-10 | 19,515 | 36.2 | 1,855 | 14,487 | 2,544 |
| 2025-11 | 8,250 | 19.9 | 2,415 | 10,150 | 2,676 |
| 2025-12 | 10,938 | 22.8 | 2,081 | 15,421 | 2,092 |
| 2026-01 | 14,029 | 27.8 | 1,985 | 17,835 | 2,142 |
| 2026-02 | 9,985 | 19.2 | 1,920 | 21,768 | 2,126 |
| 2026-03 | 5,919 | 13.8 | 2,332 | 16,895 | 2,303 |
| 2026-04 | 9,762 | 19.4 | 1,986 | 16,857 | 2,626 |
| 2026-05 | 7,395 | 20.7 | 2,799 | 18,881 | 2,483 |
| 2026-06 | 8,054 | 24.1 | 2,990 | 16,438 | 2,732 |
| 2026-07 | 9,466 | 22.0 | 2,327 | 16,413 | 2,544 |
| 2026-08 | 15,004 | 33.1 | 2,205 | 16,238 | 2,619 |
| 12-month total / weighted average | 130,635 | 282.7 | 2,164 | 192,043 | 2,456 |
Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU monthly trade in CN 29291000 (flows 1 and 2). Unit value = value ÷ net weight.
The series is lumpy in a way that reflects cargo size rather than demand: 19,515 tonnes in October 2025 against 5,919 in March 2026. Within that noise there is a sequence. The cheapest month of the window, October 2025 at 1,855 EUR/t, is also the largest, because a 7,744 tonne US parcel cleared at 1,773 and 5,499 tonnes of Korean material at 1,553 landed in the same month. The most expensive month, June 2026 at 2,990, carries no US bulk volume at all: 649 tonnes of US material cleared at 7,983 EUR/t that month, which is specialty grade, not commodity MDI.
Exports ran the other way. Volume fell from 34,989 tonnes in January 2025 to a floor of 10,660 in September 2025 and has since stabilised around 16,000 to 18,000 tonnes a month, but the value per tonne rose: 2,092 in December 2025 against 2,732 in June 2026.
Where the tonnes came from
Origins are ranked by tonnage in the latest window; intra-EU partners and aggregate codes are excluded.
| Origin | 2024-09 to 2025-08 (t) | Unit value (EUR/t) | 2025-09 to 2026-08 (t) | Unit value (EUR/t) | Change (t) | Share of latest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 31,439 | 2,788 | 42,361 | 2,316 | +10,923 | 32.4% |
| Korea | 31,408 | 1,637 | 35,051 | 1,759 | +3,643 | 26.8% |
| United States | 6,630 | 5,866 | 31,123 | 2,352 | +24,493 | 23.8% |
| Saudi Arabia | 22,605 | 1,669 | 19,004 | 1,602 | −3,601 | 14.5% |
| Japan | 1,902 | 8,002 | 1,503 | 7,378 | −399 | 1.2% |
| United Kingdom | 756 | 5,874 | 826 | 6,515 | +71 | 0.6% |
| Turkiye | 213 | 2,378 | 454 | 2,645 | +240 | 0.3% |
| Switzerland | 194 | 5,792 | 151 | 6,325 | −43 | 0.1% |
| India | 113 | 6,715 | 131 | 2,746 | +18 | 0.1% |
| Other origins | 94 | — | 31 | — | −63 | 0.0% |
| Extra-EU total | 95,354 | 2,499 | 130,635 | 2,164 | +35,281 | 100% |
Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU imports of CN 29291000 by partner, summed over each window. Intra-EU partners and aggregate codes excluded.
Two facts do most of the work. First, the US addition of 24,493 tonnes is 69.4% of the entire increase, and it did not arrive evenly: 25,170 tonnes landed between September 2025 and January 2026, then shipments fell to 128 tonnes in February, 90 in March and 53 in April, before a second 3,946 tonne parcel in July. A flow that stops that abruptly is a commercial window closing, not a demand curve moving.
Second, the cheap origins became cheaper while the mid-priced one became a discount supplier. Korean material cleared at 1,759 EUR/t, up 7.5%, and Saudi at 1,602, down 4.0%; those two lines are the floor of the market. China sat at 2,316, down 16.9% from 2,788, and its monthly values kept sliding into the summer: 2,413 in June 2026, 2,198 in July, 1,908 in August, the lowest Chinese monthly value in the whole 24-month file.
The US unit value of 5,866 EUR/t in the earlier window should not be read as a price that collapsed. At 6,630 tonnes a year, US shipments were small and specialty-weighted, with monthly values ranging from 3,059 to 14,464 EUR/t. The 31,123 tonnes of the later window cleared at a blended 2,352 because bulk MDI displaced that mix. The volume change and the composition change happen together; only the volume change is a market signal.
Destinations: a smaller export book
The destination list covers 142,917 of 192,043 exported tonnes; the residual is shown as a single line rather than distributed across unlisted partners.
| Destination | 2024-09 to 2025-08 (t) | Unit value (EUR/t) | 2025-09 to 2026-08 (t) | Unit value (EUR/t) | Change (t) | Share of latest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkiye | 55,600 | 1,903 | 43,347 | 1,838 | −12,253 | 22.6% |
| Brazil | 31,600 | 1,949 | 18,189 | 2,084 | −13,412 | 9.5% |
| United States | 30,739 | 2,607 | 15,775 | 2,871 | −14,964 | 8.2% |
| United Kingdom | 17,630 | 2,035 | 13,443 | 2,407 | −4,188 | 7.0% |
| China | 8,630 | 3,865 | 9,795 | 4,290 | +1,165 | 5.1% |
| Switzerland | 9,359 | 2,328 | 9,608 | 2,365 | +249 | 5.0% |
| Israel | 9,252 | 3,603 | 7,612 | 3,923 | −1,640 | 4.0% |
| India | 8,934 | 3,245 | 6,137 | 3,059 | −2,798 | 3.2% |
| Egypt | 7,795 | 1,727 | 3,707 | 1,874 | −4,088 | 1.9% |
| Japan | 4,360 | 5,156 | 3,622 | 5,348 | −738 | 1.9% |
| Malaysia | 1,844 | 3,354 | 2,624 | 3,346 | +780 | 1.4% |
| Korea | 2,433 | 4,337 | 2,376 | 4,136 | −58 | 1.2% |
| South Africa | 3,518 | 1,868 | 1,591 | 2,008 | −1,927 | 0.8% |
| Taiwan | 2,342 | 4,537 | 1,268 | 3,226 | −1,074 | 0.7% |
| Mexico | 904 | 3,184 | 1,112 | 3,317 | +208 | 0.6% |
| Other listed destinations | 5,250 | — | 2,712 | — | −2,538 | 1.4% |
| Unlisted destinations (residual) | 76,007 | — | 49,126 | — | −26,881 | 25.6% |
| Extra-EU total | 276,200 | 2,289 | 192,043 | 2,456 | −84,157 | 100% |
Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU exports of CN 29291000 by partner, summed over each window. Intra-EU partners and aggregate codes excluded.
The three biggest losses are Turkiye (12,253 tonnes), the United States (14,964) and Brazil (13,412); together they are 48.3% of the total decline. None of them was replaced: the only destination that grew by more than 1,000 tonnes is China, and its 9,795 tonnes are the most expensive line in the table at 4,290 EUR/t, which is specialty isocyanate, not MDI. The residual line is large enough to matter: 49,126 tonnes went to partners outside those listed above, and it fell by 26,881 tonnes, so the contraction is broad rather than concentrated in one relationship.
The annual backdrop, 2020 to 2025
The monthly window explains the present; the annual series shows how unusual it is. The EU imported two and a half times as much in 2023 as in 2020, then saw volume settle while price fell back.
| Year | Extra-EU imports (t) | Import value (EUR m) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Extra-EU exports (t) | Export unit value (EUR/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 52,375 | 132.8 | 2,535 | 312,814 | 2,141 |
| 2021 | 82,976 | 236.8 | 2,854 | 290,732 | 2,803 |
| 2022 | 119,282 | 434.3 | 3,641 | 223,461 | 3,498 |
| 2023 | 129,816 | 413.8 | 3,188 | 217,659 | 2,869 |
| 2024 | 107,911 | 253.0 | 2,345 | 275,592 | 2,397 |
| 2025 | 115,157 | 271.5 | 2,358 | 240,575 | 2,283 |
Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, annual frequency (freq=A), EU27 extra-EU trade in CN 29291000. 2025 is complete in this dataset.
Import volume peaked in 2023 at 129,816 tonnes and has not returned there, but the twelve months to August 2026 at 130,635 tonnes already exceed that peak. Export volume has not recovered from its 2023 low: 240,575 tonnes in 2025 against 312,814 in 2020. And the price cycle is now in its fourth year of deflation from the 2022 peak of 3,641 EUR/t on imports and 3,498 on exports; the latest twelve-month averages of 2,164 and 2,456 are 40.6% and 29.8% below those peaks.
The pattern is not a demand story: import competition has taken the commodity end of the range, and the export book that remains is the specialised end.
The global supply side: who added export volume
The EU is a small part of this trade. Four exporters outside the EU reported 876,207 tonnes between them in 2025 in the fixed panel below, against an extra-EU import book of 130,635 tonnes.
| Exporter | 2020 (kt) | 2021 (kt) | 2022 (kt) | 2023 (kt) | 2024 (kt) | 2025 (kt) | 2025 unit value (USD/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 375,645 | 522,580 | n/r | 482,836 | 523,306 | 732,822 | 1,854 |
| United States | 147,498 | 141,135 | 152,928 | 171,917 | 165,602 | 192,446 | 2,328 |
| Korea, Rep. | 308,185 | 336,689 | 345,581 | 408,983 | 434,802 | 432,425 | 1,731 |
| Japan | 164,706 | 156,871 | 150,756 | 164,392 | 169,014 | 133,514 | 2,750 |
| Saudi Arabia | 163,284 | 60,002 | 134,543 | 138,733 | 137,175 | 117,823 | 1,875 |
| Four-reporter fixed panel | 783,673 | 694,697 | 783,807 | 884,024 | 906,593 | 876,207 | 2,037 |
Source: UN Comtrade, annual HS 292910 exports, world partner. China is excluded from the fixed panel because its 2022 record carries a value but no net weight.
China is the source of most of the extra volume: exports rose from 523,306 tonnes in 2024 to 732,822 in 2025, up 40.0%, at 1,854 USD/t, 9.6% below 2024 and 24.7% below 2023. The United States shipped 192,446 tonnes in 2025, up 16.2%, at 2,328 USD/t, 22.0% below the previous year — the same year in which US-origin material reached Europe at 1,773 to 2,408 EUR/t. Korea held volume flat at 432,425 tonnes and let its unit value fall 8.2% to 1,731 USD/t. Japan, at 2,750 USD/t, and Saudi Arabia, at 1,875, ran smaller books, down 21.0% and 14.1%.
The policy layer: the US duty and the volume it redirects
Analysis. On 8 April 2026 the US Department of Commerce published its final affirmative anti-dumping determination on methylene diphenyl diisocyanate from China. The weighted-average margins were 85.11% for Covestro Polymers (China) and for Shandong Mingko shipping Wanhua material, and 159.04% for the China-wide entity, a rate based on facts available with adverse inferences. The petitioner was the Ad Hoc MDI Fair Trade Coalition, whose members are BASF Corporation and The Dow Chemical Company. The same notice records US imports of the product from China at 198,761 tonnes in 2024, against 163,888 in 2022.
That 198,761 tonnes is the number to hold on to. It is one and a half times the entire extra-EU import book of 130,635 tonnes in the latest twelve months. A duty at 85% to 159% does not remove that volume from the world; it redirects it, and the question for a European buyer is whether Europe becomes the outlet.
Analysis. The EU customs record is consistent with that reading, without proving it. Imports from China rose 34.7% to 42,361 tonnes and their unit value fell 16.9% to 2,316 EUR/t; the four heaviest Chinese months in the 24-month file are August 2026 (6,731 tonnes), June 2026 (5,893), May 2026 (4,851) and July 2026 (4,297), and all four fall after the US determination. The caveat is that Chinese volumes were already climbing in early 2025, before the US case concluded, and that a single quarter of restocking can produce the same pattern.
Outlook. The supply side has been adding capacity into exactly the region that is now exporting to Europe. BASF’s own investor presentation of 2 October 2025 puts its global MDI capacity at 2,000 kt a year and describes the final phase of the Geismar, Louisiana expansion as lifting that site to approximately 600,000 tonnes a year by 2026, on USD 780 million of investment in the final phase. The same document puts MDI market growth at 312 kt in 2024, or 3.7%, with construction at 42% of sales volume, appliances at 18% and CASE elastomers at 16%. Capacity that lands in a slow-demand year has to find a home, and the EU is the closest deep market to the US Gulf.
Outlook. That is also the most plausible reading of the five-month burst documented above: 25,170 tonnes of US-origin isocyanate between September 2025 and January 2026, at monthly unit values from 1,773 to 2,408 EUR/t, then almost nothing from February to June. If another US supply wave arrives, the pressure will show up first in the same two lines — monthly US volume and the blended import unit value — not in the annual totals.
What this means for a buyer or an analyst
Origin concentration is now the main structural fact: four countries supply 97.6% of extra-EU imports, and the top two, China and Korea, supply 59.2% between them at unit values of 2,316 and 1,759 EUR/t. A purchasing plan that treats those two as interchangeable is exposed to a unit-value gap of 31.7% and to whatever a trade case would do to it.
Do not use these unit values as a contract price. CN 29291000 contains MDI in polymeric and pure grades, TDI, and the aliphatic isocyanates; the Japanese import line at 7,378 EUR/t and the EU export line to China at 4,290 EUR/t sit in the same customs code as the 1,602 EUR/t Saudi import line. The blended average moves when the mix moves, which is precisely what happened to the US figure between the two windows. Grade-level splits are a separate data request.
The export contraction deserves as much attention as the import surge. EU producers shipped 84,157 fewer tonnes abroad, with Turkey, Brazil and the United States accounting for 48.3% of the loss, while export unit values rose 7.3%. For a European converter that is a signal about availability rather than price: material that used to go to Izmir or Sao Paulo is being kept closer to home.
For the monthly series by origin and grade, the partner-level unit-value bands behind these averages, or the landed-cost arithmetic for a specific supplier under a specific duty scenario, request a sample report or a custom research brief.
The chain behind the number
MDI sits at the end of a short aromatic chain: nitrobenzene is hydrogenated to aniline, which is condensed with formaldehyde and phosgenated into polymeric MDI; the foam it makes needs polyether polyol, itself built on propylene oxide. TDI, the other isocyanate in this tariff line, runs from toluene. A change in the isocyanate import book therefore shows up as derived demand at every upstream step, and the aniline and polyol pages should be read alongside this one.
Data sources
- Eurostat Comext, DS-045409 (EU trade since 1988 by HS2-4-6 and CN8), EU27 extra-EU monthly and annual trade in CN 29291000, retrieved 20 October 2026 — https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/DS-045409/default/table (accessed 2026-10-20)
- Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 monthly query, EU27 imports from EXT_EU27_2020, 2024-09 to 2026-08 — monthly imports query (accessed 2026-10-20)
- Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 monthly query, EU27 exports to EXT_EU27_2020, 2024-09 to 2026-08 — monthly exports query (accessed 2026-10-20)
- Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 annual query, EU27 extra-EU trade in CN 29291000, 2020 to 2025 — annual query (accessed 2026-10-20)
- US Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, final affirmative determination in the antidumping duty investigation of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate from China, 8 April 2026 — https://www.trade.gov/final-affirmative-determination-antidumping-investigation-methylene-diphenyl-diisocyanate-china (accessed 2026-10-20)
- BASF, “Vertical integration at its core: Polyurethanes value chain”, Capital Market Update, Antwerp, 2 October 2025 — BASF investor presentation (PDF) (accessed 2026-10-20)
- UN Comtrade public preview API, annual HS 292910 exports, reporters as listed, 2020–2025 — https://comtradeapi.un.org/public/v1/preview/C/A/HS (accessed 2026-10-20)