Acetic Acid Import and Export Data to 2025, with a 2026 Monthly Update to August: China’s Share Doubles and Import Values Fall 10%

Summary. EU27 imports of acetic acid under CN 29152100 were 593,814 tonnes in the twelve months to August 2026, 0.9% below the 599,288 tonnes of the previous window, but their customs value fell 10.9% to EUR 251.5 million and the average unit value dropped 10.0% to 423 EUR per tonne. China supplied 101,248 tonnes, more than double its 49,088 tonnes a year earlier, taking a 17.1% share. The United States remained the largest origin at 285,926 tonnes but shipped 20.1% less and cleared at 335 EUR/t, the lowest of any large origin; the United Kingdom rose 10.1% to 167,474 tonnes. Exports fell 37.7% to 54,620 tonnes as Turkish offtake halved. In January–July 2026 imports ran 14.3% ahead of the same months of 2025 for a spend 0.4% lower. Since the window closed, INEOS has idled the three Hull acetyls plants it calls Europe’s last world-scale units.

Data updated: 2026-10-21

Latest 12 months: monthly volumes and unit values

The window covers September 2025 to August 2026, the latest twelve complete months in Eurostat Comext DS-045409 for EU27 extra-EU trade in CN 29152100, retrieved on 21 October 2026. Extra-EU means the partner aggregate EXT_EU27_2020, so intra-EU shipments are excluded. Unit value is customs value divided by net weight and includes freight and insurance to the EU border.

Month	Imports (t)	Import value (EUR m)	Import unit value (EUR/t)	Exports (t)	Export value (EUR m)	Export unit value (EUR/t)
2025-09	46,555	24.5	527	8,679	5.5	630
2025-10	43,788	21.3	486	2,131	2.5	1,164
2025-11	36,415	13.8	380	7,449	4.3	571
2025-12	46,071	21.7	470	2,299	1.4	599
2026-01	55,919	21.5	384	6,566	3.9	598
2026-02	41,056	15.7	383	4,849	3.2	658
2026-03	48,731	21.1	433	4,210	3.1	738
2026-04	56,560	22.8	403	3,958	3.1	777
2026-05	46,045	18.5	401	2,687	2.0	738
2026-06	69,931	27.4	392	2,817	2.9	1,029
2026-07	62,883	27.9	443	3,690	3.0	808
2026-08	39,859	15.4	386	5,285	3.6	676
12-month total / weighted average	593,814	251.5	423	54,620	38.3	701

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU monthly trade in CN 29152100 (flows 1 and 2). Unit value = value ÷ net weight.

The series has two price regimes. September and October 2025 cleared at 527 and 486 EUR/t; from November 2025 no month exceeded 470, and November’s 380 EUR/t is the lowest in the 32-month file that starts in January 2024. Volume did not fall with the price: June 2026 at 69,931 tonnes was the largest month since August 2024, July added 62,883 tonnes, and August dropped to 39,859 tonnes, the weakest since November 2025.

Exports are smaller and noisier: October 2025 shows 1,164 EUR/t on 2,131 tonnes and June 2026 1,029 EUR/t on 2,817 tonnes, small parcels of higher-priced material rather than a market price. Volume is the signal, at 54,620 tonnes against 87,634, and 28,777 against 51,341 in the January–July comparison, a fall of 44.0%.

The annual backdrop: a smaller import book than 2019

Calendar-year Comext data put the window in a longer frame. Imports halved from 1.08 million tonnes in 2019 to 561,648 tonnes in 2025, while the unit value ran from 406 EUR/t to a 2022 peak of 723 and back to 473.

Year	Imports (t)	Import value (EUR m)	Import unit value (EUR/t)	Exports (t)	Export value (EUR m)	Export unit value (EUR/t)
2019	1,082,865	440.1	406	56,824	34.9	615
2020	985,273	330.3	335	50,881	32.0	629
2021	855,631	425.5	497	47,756	51.0	1,067
2022	738,565	534.0	723	30,894	42.2	1,364
2023	631,938	333.4	528	34,686	34.9	1,005
2024	709,391	324.4	457	57,243	45.7	798
2025	561,648	265.7	473	79,965	49.1	614

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU annual trade in CN 29152100, calendar years.

Two details matter more than the totals. 2025 was the largest EU export year in the series at 79,965 tonnes and the cheapest, at 614 EUR/t, so the 2026 collapse unwinds a one-year spike rather than a trend. And the 423 EUR/t of the latest window is below every calendar year from 2021 to 2025, though still above the 335 of 2020.

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
United States	357,730	418	285,926	335	−71,803	48.2%
United Kingdom	152,125	575	167,474	548	+15,349	28.2%
China	49,088	497	101,248	450	+52,159	17.1%
Saudi Arabia	23,176	467	11,422	391	−11,754	1.9%
Taiwan	4,938	631	10,001	454	+5,063	1.7%
Switzerland	6,180	597	6,670	621	+490	1.1%
Singapore	—	—	5,387	427	+5,387	0.9%
Norway	3,545	268	3,313	199	−232	0.6%
Other origins	2,506	—	2,373	—	−133	0.4%
Extra-EU total	599,288	471	593,814	423	−5,474	100%

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU imports of CN 29152100 by partner, summed over each window. Intra-EU partners and aggregate codes excluded.

The composition change is larger than the total. China added 52,159 tonnes while the United States removed 71,803, so a flat market absorbed a doubling of Chinese volume. The monthly path shows how recent that is: 3,055 tonnes in February 2026, 10,567 in April, 12,582 in May, 17,290 in June and 22,719 in July, the highest Chinese month in the file, before 3,976 in August. The 82.5% month-on-month fall is cargo timing rather than a demand collapse, but July should not be annualised.

The unit-value ordering has inverted. Chinese cargoes cleared at 450 EUR/t against 497, a 9.5% decline; US cargoes fell from 418 to 335, down 19.9%, so Chinese material now clears 34.4% above the US line where the gap was 18.9% a year earlier. That is not what a simple “China sets the price” story predicts, and part of the answer is in the code: CN 29152100 covers every concentration, so origin averages mix glacial acid, dilute material and different packaging. The gap is a reason to ask for grade and Incoterms, not a like-for-like comparison.

Destinations: a halved export book

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	44,513	435	21,446	406	−23,068	39.3%
United Kingdom	12,464	523	10,875	513	−1,589	19.9%
Switzerland	14,599	614	10,658	685	−3,941	19.5%
Norway	3,226	769	3,133	688	−93	5.7%
Israel	678	574	535	663	−144	1.0%
India	19	20,093	532	1,093	+513	1.0%
United States	236	6,042	451	3,697	+215	0.8%
Other destinations	1,358	—	6,266	—	+4,908	11.5%
Extra-EU total	87,634	641	54,620	701	−33,015	100%

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU exports of CN 29152100 by partner, summed over each window. Partner rows cover 90.1% of the total; the residual is shown as one line rather than distributed.

Turkiye accounts for 69.9% of the decline: 44,513 tonnes became 21,446 at a slightly lower unit value, while the UK, Switzerland and Norway each moved by less than 4,000 tonnes. Turkiye is also the clearest case of substitution rather than lost demand. It imported 144,126 tonnes in calendar 2025 at USD 482/t, according to Comtrade, of which the EU supplied 43,543 tonnes, about 30%. In the twelve months to August 2026 the EU shipped 21,446 tonnes, half its calendar-2025 volume, which points to origin substitution rather than a collapse in Turkish buying. That shift also explains why the aggregate export unit value rose 9.4% while volume fell: the cheap Turkish parcel is a smaller part of a smaller book.

Where the tonnes land

Member-state declarations show where customs entry happens, not where the acid is consumed. Belgium took 545,626 tonnes, 91.9% of the total, at 407 EUR/t, the closest thing in the file to a bulk benchmark; Spain took 15,905 tonnes at 442 and Germany 10,213 at 712. The German and Dutch values, 712 and 844 on 2.5% of the volume between them, describe specialty or repackaged material rather than an expensive market, so a bulk buyer should use the Belgian figure as the reference.

The global supply side: China’s export value halved while volume held

Comtrade annual data explain the direction of price. China exported 404,145 tonnes in 2020 and 1,156,794 tonnes in 2025, with 1,164,291 tonnes in 2024, yet the value of those exports fell from USD 819.2 million in 2021 to USD 346.6 million in 2025; the 2025 average of USD 300/t is the lowest in the series. China’s 2021 net weight is null in the Comtrade record, so no unit value exists for that year and it is n/r here. The United States exported 846,206 tonnes in 2025 at USD 474/t, up from 807,736 tonnes, with value up 4.3% to USD 400.7 million while its EU-bound volume fell 20.1%, which reads as diversion toward other markets rather than a loss of competitiveness. India is the demand that absorbs the surplus, with an import bill of USD 920.9 million in 2021 and USD 470.3 million in 2025, and 1,135,703 tonnes in 2022 where net weight is reported. China’s annual exports are roughly twice the entire EU extra-EU import book, and the 101,248 tonnes that reached the EU are about 8.8% of them on mismatched reference periods.

The supply side: Europe’s last world-scale acetyls plant goes idle

Trade data records what crossed a border, not why. Two INEOS statements supply the missing part. On 7 October 2025 the company said it would cut 60 jobs, 20% of the workforce, at its Hull site, citing energy costs and what it called dumped Chinese and US imports, and called on the UK government and the European Commission to introduce anti-dumping duties. That is a commercial position, not a finding by a trade authority, and a request for duties is not a measure in force. On 22 September 2026 it idled all three of its world-scale Hull plants, describing them as “Europe’s last remaining world scale Acetyls units” and citing gas at 12 times the US level.

Analysis. The customs record has not priced this yet, because the idling came after the August cut-off. The exposure is the UK line: 167,474 tonnes, 28.2% of extra-EU imports, up 10.1%. GB entries are not plant-specific and can include material of other origin stored or traded in the UK, so the whole line is not Hull output, but INEOS calls Hull the last world-scale acetyls site in Europe, which makes the line the exposure. If it falls toward zero, the replacement has to come from China (+52,159 tonnes), Taiwan (+5,063) and Singapore (+5,387), with the United States as the low-price swing supplier.

What this means for a buyer or an analyst

Analysis. The relevant bulk band is 335 to 450 EUR/t cif, the range of the two largest origins, not the 423 EUR/t aggregate. The grade question needs asking explicitly, because a 34.4% gap inside one eight-digit code is too wide to be a pure market spread. And origin flexibility is now a contract term: a specification that names a single European producer is exposed to a plant idling, while one that admits US, Chinese, Taiwanese or Singaporean material has four lines to test. The test to watch is Comext for October to December 2026; a sharp fall in the UK line absorbed by Chinese and US volume would confirm that imports are replacing the idled plant.

Data limitations

CN 29152100 covers all concentrations, so unit values mix grades and packaging and are not product prices. Comext records extra-EU trade only, so intra-EU shipments from the Belgian entry point are invisible, and member-state figures record customs entry rather than consumption. The 2026 months are provisional and August in particular may be incomplete.

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 29152100, retrieved 21 October 2026 — https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/DS-045409/default/table?lang=en
• Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 monthly query, EU27 imports from EXT_EU27_2020, 2024-01 to 2026-08 — Comext API, imports
• Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 monthly query, EU27 exports to EXT_EU27_2020, 2024-01 to 2026-08 — Comext API, exports
• Eurostat Comext API, DS-045409 annual query, EU27 extra-EU trade in CN 29152100, 2019 to 2025 — Comext API, annual
• UN Comtrade public preview API, annual HS 291521 exports and imports, reporters China (156), United States (842), India (699) and Turkiye (792), 2020–2025 — https://comtradeapi.un.org/public/v1/preview/C/A/HS?includeDesc=true&reporterCode=156&period=2025&flowCode=X&cmdCode=291521&partnerCode=0
• INEOS, “INEOS Idles Europe’s last world-scale Acetyls plant as Energy prices hit 12 times US level”, 22 September 2026 — https://www.ineos.com/news/ineos-idles-europes-last-world-scale-acetyls-plant-as-energy-prices-hit-12-times-us-level
• INEOS, “INEOS cuts 60 jobs in Hull as UK energy costs and dumped Chinese imports cripple industry”, 7 October 2025 — https://www.ineos.com/news/ineos-cuts-60-jobs-in-hull-as-uk-energy-costs-and-dumped-chinese-imports-cripple-industry
• INEOS Acetyls, business profile — https://www.ineos.com/businesses/ineos-acetyls/

Related PetroApex coverage

Acetic acid sits on a short chain. It is made mainly by methanol carbonylation, which our EU methanol import study covers on the same Comext basis. Its largest derivative is vinyl acetate, and its largest single use is as the reaction solvent in purified terephthalic acid plants, which consume paraxylene; our PTA trade and anti-dumping analysis follows the demand side of that link.

For the partner-level monthly series behind these totals, the grade and packaging detail inside CN 29152100, or a landed-cost model for a named origin and volume, request a sample report or a custom research brief.