HomeMarket InsightsAromatics & IntermediatesStyrene Import and Export Data to 2025, with a 2026 Monthly Update: Two Suppliers, a Third Less Volume and a Unit-Value Swing

Styrene Import and Export Data to 2025, with a 2026 Monthly Update: Two Suppliers, a Third Less Volume and a Unit-Value Swing

EU27 extra-EU styrene imports ran 678.8 m EUR on 733.4 kt in the twelve months to July 2026, while January-July imports were 35.9% below their value and 33.1% below their volume a year earlier; exports rose 48.8% to 161.0 m EUR. The United States and Saudi Arabia carried 90.3% of import value and both fell, China and Taiwan grew fastest from a small base, and the implied import unit value swung from 754 to 1,361 EUR/t.

09/25/2026
Aromatics & Intermediates
20 min read

Bottom line: Europe’s styrene trade has become a mix story, not a volume story. In the twelve months to July 2026 the EU27 imported 678.8 m EUR of styrene (HS 290250) — 733.4 kt — and exported 258.2 m EUR, or 290.0 kt. In the January–July window imports were 35.9% below their value and 33.1% below their volume a year earlier, while exports rose 48.8% in value, to 161.0 m EUR, and 56.3% in volume, to 163.4 kt: less monomer comes in, more goes out. Two origins decide the inbound number — the United States at 50.0% of twelve-month import value and Saudi Arabia at 40.3%, together 90.3% — and both fell sharply in 2026 (-29.1% and -56.6%). The unit-value line is where caution is needed: the implied import unit value fell to 754 EUR/t in 2025-12 and reached 1,361 EUR/t in 2026-06 on a thin 32.6 kt month, so part of that 80% swing is price and part is the origin mix changing underneath it.

Data updated: 2026-09-25. The annual table below carries UN Comtrade files through 2025; the sections before it extend that with Eurostat Comext monthly data through 2026-07 and Comtrade monthly customs returns for India and the United States through June 2026.

Latest 12 months: monthly values, volumes and implied unit values

The freshest reading on this product is not an annual number: Eurostat’s Comext monthly series covers the whole window from 2025-08 to 2026-07, so the table below is the actual monthly record, not a share-of-year estimate. The latest month available at the time of writing is 2026-07, at 60.4 m EUR of imports and 17.3 m EUR of exports; the import unit value that month was 1,185 EUR/t and the export unit value 987 EUR/t.

EU27 extra-EU trade in styrene (HS 290250) — monthly, 2025-08 to 2026-07. Source: Eurostat Comext, dataset DS-045409 (EU27, extra-EU trade, monthly), retrieved 2026-09-25. Quantity converted from 100 kg to tonnes; implied unit value is reported value divided by reported quantity for the same month, across all grades and terms inside the six-digit code.
Month Imports, m EUR Imports, kt Imports, EUR/t Exports, m EUR Exports, kt Exports, EUR/t
2025-08 43.06 48.05 896 18.21 21.06 864
2025-09 67.44 77.56 870 9.51 11.91 799
2025-10 56.05 69.42 807 26.55 36.28 732
2025-11 52.49 69.16 759 15.44 21.01 735
2025-12 35.65 47.26 754 27.41 36.27 756
2026-01 55.70 70.25 793 16.66 21.69 768
2026-02 33.63 42.20 797 15.37 18.96 810
2026-03 60.68 69.58 872 31.28 34.12 917
2026-04 65.07 68.23 954 17.47 17.23 1,014
2026-05 104.27 88.05 1,184 22.40 18.37 1,220
2026-06 44.33 32.58 1,361 40.52 35.52 1,141
2026-07 60.45 51.01 1,185 17.33 17.55 987

Three readings matter more than the month-to-month noise. First, the direction of the two flows is different in kind, not just in size: the EU27 exported 290.0 kt over the twelve months against imports of 733.4 kt, so this is a product Europe still ships out in volume even as its own capacity shrinks. Second, the 2026 window is smaller on the import side — 424.1 m EUR and 421.9 kt in January–July against 661.7 m EUR and 630.8 kt a year earlier, a fall of 35.9% in value and 33.1% in volume, with the single largest month of 2026 at 104.3 m EUR (2026-05). Third, the unit values moved in opposite directions: imports from 1,049 to 1,005 EUR/t (-4.2%), exports from 1,035 to 985 EUR/t (-4.8%). Implied unit values here are customs averages over everything declared inside HS 2902 50, not a market price assessment, and they should be read as a level check rather than as a price index.

Origins and destinations: two suppliers decide the inbound number

The partner detail is where this market gets interesting. The table below is computed from the complete Comext partner dimension, not a sample of countries; its rows reconcile to the published extra-EU total.

EU27 extra-EU styrene (HS 290250) by partner: lagging twelve months (2025-08 to 2026-07) with the January–July comparison. Source: Eurostat Comext, dataset DS-045409, retrieved 2026-09-25. The “Countries/territories n.e.s.” row is the sum of the residual partner codes in the Comext dimension (QU, QV, QW, QX, QY, QZ); it is a category, not a country.
Flow Partner L12, m EUR L12 share L12, kt L12, EUR/t Jan–Jul 2025, m EUR Jan–Jul 2026, m EUR Change
Imports United States 340.55 50.0% 348.0 979 373.42 264.79 -29.1%
Imports Saudi Arabia 274.53 40.3% 319.8 858 254.49 110.57 -56.6%
Imports China 40.83 6.0% 42.4 963 18.80 36.85 +96.1%
Imports Taiwan 12.32 1.8% 12.4 995 3.98 9.64 +141.9%
Imports Türkiye 3.15 0.5% 2.5 1,239 1.64 2.23 +35.8%
Imports India 2.69 0.4% 3.0 897 0.00 0.00 n/a
Imports Kuwait 2.66 0.4% 3.0 885 0.00 0.00 new in 2026
Imports Countries/territories n.e.s. 2.39 0.4% 2.0 1,222 0.00 2.39 new in 2026
Exports (EU27 extra-EU), top destinations
Exports Türkiye 156.38 60.6% 186.1 840 53.55 93.89 +75.3%
Exports Norway 55.41 21.5% 58.5 948 33.96 33.74 -0.7%
Exports United Kingdom 20.45 7.9% 23.0 891 10.14 13.60 +34.2%
Exports Serbia 5.08 2.0% 4.4 1,155 2.80 3.56 +27.0%
Exports Tunisia 4.66 1.8% 3.9 1,188 0.83 3.45 +313.2%
Exports South Africa 4.52 1.8% 3.6 1,254 0.00 4.37 new in 2026
Exports Brazil 1.73 0.7% 1.5 1,176 0.05 1.42 new in 2026
Exports Algeria 1.61 0.6% 1.4 1,118 1.75 0.95 -46.0%

Imports. The largest single origin over the twelve months was United States at 340.5 m EUR (50.0% of import value, 348.0 kt at an implied 979 EUR/t), and its January–July line moved from 373.42 to 264.79 m EUR (-29.1%). Second was Saudi Arabia at 274.5 m EUR, 40.3% of the total, moving from 254.49 to 110.57 m EUR (-56.6%). Those two alone carried 90.3% of the 678.8 m EUR import bill, and the third and fourth lines are an order of magnitude smaller: China at 40.8 m EUR (+96.1% against January–July 2025) and Taiwan at 12.3 m EUR (+141.9%). The small lines are the ones moving fastest in percentage terms, but on a base of 18.80 and 3.98 m EUR respectively, so they are a diversification signal rather than a volume shift.

Exports. Türkiye is the largest destination (156.4 m EUR, 60.6% of twelve-month export value), followed by Norway (55.4 m EUR) and United Kingdom (20.5 m EUR). The January–July comparison separates the destinations that held from the ones that did not: Türkiye went from 53.55 to 93.89 m EUR (+75.3%), Norway from 33.96 to 33.74 m EUR (-0.7%), United Kingdom from 10.14 to 13.60 m EUR (+34.2%). Because EU styrene exports largely follow the derivatives chain — polystyrene, ABS, SBR and unsaturated polyester — the destination list is a reasonable proxy for where European styrenics capacity is still running.

The unit-value swing: 754 to 1,361 EUR/t in seven months

The monthly table carries a swing that will be misread if it is treated as a price index. Across 2025-08 to 2026-07 the implied import unit value ran from 754 EUR/t in 2025-12 (47.3 kt) to 1,361 EUR/t in 2026-06 (32.6 kt), a range of 80% within seven months. Three mechanical points have to be separated from any genuine change in price. First, it is value divided by a reported weight for the same month, so it inherits whatever mix of origins, grades and contract terms was declared inside HS 2902 50 that month. Second, it moves inversely with the size of the month: the highest unit-value months here are among the smallest by volume, which is what a mix effect produces. Third, the origin composition itself changed inside the window, so part of the level shift is a different basket being priced.

Analysis (data quality, not a market call). The usable reading is the level over a full half-year, not the month-to-month change: the twelve-month average import unit value was 926 EUR/t against 890 on the export side, and the January–July comparison moved from 1,049 to 1,005 EUR/t on imports and from 1,035 to 985 on exports. Anyone using these series for a price change should work on volumes and a fixed origin panel, and should treat a single month below roughly 40 kt — of which there are several here — as a mix observation.

The global annual picture through 2025

The annual panel below is the wider frame: the same 30 reporting economies queried every year through UN Comtrade, then reduced to a fixed core — only the reporters that filed HS 290250 in every year from 2020 to 2025 — so that year-on-year change cannot be an artefact of coverage. 23 of the panel filed 2025 export data and 24 filed 2025 import data, against 25 and 26 for 2024. 2025 is first-reported and subject to revision.

UN Comtrade, HS 290250 (styrene), partner World, annual 2020–2025, fixed core panel. Value core: 22 reporters for exports and 24 for imports. Net-weight core: 19 and 17 reporters respectively. Implied unit value is reported value divided by reported net weight, computed on the weight core only.
Flow Year Value, m USD Volume, kt Implied USD/t Reporters in core
Exports 2020 6,163 8,762 694 22
Exports 2021 9,788 6,494 1,195 22
Exports 2022 10,254 4,998 1,296 22
Exports 2023 8,037 6,702 1,126 22
Exports 2024 7,337 4,432 1,191 22
Exports 2025 6,377 5,939 1,012 22
Imports 2020 6,099 7,868 746 24
Imports 2021 8,666 4,933 1,232 24
Imports 2022 8,655 4,140 1,317 24
Imports 2023 7,201 6,367 1,042 24
Imports 2024 6,988 4,506 1,241 24
Imports 2025 5,415 3,721 1,045 24

Two readings follow. Global export value moved from 10,254 m USD in 2022 to 6,377 m USD in 2025, a change of -37.8% from the peak year, with 2025 -13.1% against 2024; import value went from 8,655 to 5,415 m USD (-37.4% against 2022, -22.5% against 2024). The weight core puts the 2025 export unit value at 1,012 USD/t and the import value at 1,045 USD/t.

Who trades it matters as much as the totals, and the order on this panel is not the order most readers expect. India is the largest reporting importer of HS 290250 in 2025 at 1,184 m USD, against 1,313 m USD in 2024; China follows at 224 m USD (451 m USD in 2024) and the United States at 151 m USD (278 m USD). On the export side the largest reporters were the United States at 1,616 m USD (1,701 m USD in 2024), Korea at 254 m USD and the Netherlands at 1,016 m USD. Two cautions apply before this ranking is used for anything: 2025 is first-reported and subject to revision, and a single year of a single six-digit code carries a lot of trade-pattern noise, so treat it as a map of who matters rather than as market share. India’s position is independently corroborated below, where its monthly customs returns are used.

Outside the EU: India and the United States

Two national monthly series extend the picture beyond Europe. Both are customs returns for the World partner, comparable with each other but not with the EU aggregate above; India files net weight for only part of the window.

  • India, imports: 672.1 m USD in January–June 2026 against 655.8 m USD in the same six months of 2025 (+2.5%); net weight is reported for 6/6 and 5/6 of those months, so no volume comparison is made. 202606 alone printed 1,480 USD/t on 106.1 kt. The same series sums to 1,184.3 m USD for the whole of 2025, matching India’s annual filing exactly.
  • India, exports: 2.0 m USD in January–June 2026 against 2.9 m USD in the same six months of 2025 (-30.4%); net weight is reported for 4/6 and 6/6 of those months, so no volume comparison is made.
  • United States, imports: 102.5 m USD in January–June 2026 against 67.0 m USD in the same six months of 2025 (+53.1%); net weight is reported for 1/6 and 1/6 of those months, so no volume comparison is made.
  • United States, exports: 902.3 m USD in January–June 2026 against 960.7 m USD in the same six months of 2025 (-6.1%); net weight is reported for 0/6 and 1/6 of those months, so no volume comparison is made.

Analysis (data quality, not a market call). One anomaly has to be flagged before the United States lines are used. The US monthly return for HS 290250 shows World imports of 2.12 m USD in April 2025, 0.03 m USD in May 2025 and 0.02 m USD in June 2025 — three consecutive months sitting two to three orders of magnitude below the same series’ own 7.28 m USD in July 2025, and below its 150.8 m USD full-year total, which the twelve values do in fact sum to. A genuine collapse in US styrene buying would not revert within a month, so those readings are a reporting artefact, not a market event, and the +53.1% US import comparison above must not be quoted without this caveat. The US export series, which carries the volume story, is unaffected.

What the capacity record and the trade rules already say

Analysis / outlook. Everything in this section comes from published documents, not from the customs data above, and each statement is attributed to the document it came from.

The EU’s styrene problem is a capacity problem, and it is documented at association level. Cefic’s European Chemical Closures & Investments Radar 2022–2025, prepared by Roland Berger and released on 28 January 2026, puts cumulative announced European chemical plant closures at 37 Mt of capacity since 2022 — around 9% of European production capacity — with the loss of 20,000 direct jobs and a further 89,000 indirect jobs at risk. The same report shows announced annual investment capacity falling from 2.7 Mt in 2022 to 0.3 Mt year-to-date in 2025. That asymmetry, closures running while new investment stops, is the reason the import share of a monomer like styrene can rise even in a year when demand is weak.

The asset-level evidence points the same way. Chemistry World reported on 27 January 2026 that Saudi Basic Industries sold its European petrochemicals business to the German investor Aequita for $500 million and its thermoplastics business to Mutares for an implied $450 million, after announcing the permanent closure of its offline Teesside cracker. The same article quotes Bain’s global chemicals chair putting the required European rationalisation at around 2 million tonnes a year, about 10% of capacity, with European cracker utilisation then near 75% — and styrene sits in exactly that cracker complex, whether it is made alongside propylene oxide or from ethylbenzene.

The demand side has been re-drawn by trade law rather than by demand. On 12 February 2026 the European Commission imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene resins from Korea and Taiwan — 5.2–7.5% for Korea and 10.9–21.7% for Taiwan — by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/316, following provisional duties imposed on 18 August 2025 by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1739. The Commission’s own summary records that in an EU ABS market worth about €1.4 billion, Korean and Taiwanese suppliers had reached a 31% market share by the October 2023–September 2024 period while the EU industry’s share fell to 63%, from 72% in 2020, with some 920 people directly employed in ABS production in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. The complaint behind the case was lodged by INEOS Styrolution, Versalis and Trinseo Europe — that is, by the same styrenics chain whose monomer this article measures.

The monomer-specific record is narrower, and it comes from the companies themselves. Trinseo announced on 30 October 2023 that it would discontinue operations at its ethylbenzene styrene monomer facility in Terneuzen, the Netherlands, with the plant ceasing operations in November 2023 and the company thereafter purchasing all of its styrene needs from third-party suppliers; the earlier closure of its Boehlen, Germany styrene plant was announced on 19 December 2022 and attributed by the company to that site’s subscale size, industry capacity additions and elevated European natural gas prices. The Terneuzen reasoning is the most useful sentence here for anyone modelling EU styrene: management cited reduced European demand together with global styrene capacity additions, and concluded it could serve its downstream business through market purchases. That is the structural change the customs data records — Europe buying its monomer rather than making it.

What follows for a buyer or an analyst. Three statements are supportable from this dataset plus those documents, and no more. (1) The EU is a net exporter of styrene by volume in the current window, so European monomer availability is set by how many of its remaining units run, not by the import bill. (2) Import concentration is the sensitivity: a two-origin import book means the customs unit value in Table 1 is a poor guide to next quarter’s contract level, because one supplier’s outage moves the mix. (3) The duty structure on ABS is a demand-side tax on the styrenics chain, so monomer and resin flows belong together. Nothing here is a price forecast.

Related PetroApex product pages

Styrene is an intermediate, and its numbers only close with the pages on either side of it in view:

  • Styrene — the page we track for grades, specifications and the producer map behind these flows.
  • Benzene and ethylene — the two feedstocks that set the ethylbenzene-to-styrene cash cost.
  • Butadiene and acrylonitrile — the other two monomers in the ABS chain whose duties are described above.

Need the full styrene picture, including the derivatives chain?

This article covers reported trade flows and their implied unit values. It does not cover the unit-by-unit European supply map, the ethylbenzene-to-styrene cash-cost stack, or the polymer-grade specification limits that decide which cargo can land where. For a sample chapter, the full table of contents, or a bespoke cut, request a sample report or a custom research scope and we will come back with scope, data dictionary and price.

Data sources and method

All customs figures above are computed from the raw responses of the public APIs listed below and are not copied from any secondary summary. Each number can be traced to a query or a document that was opened and verified on 2026-09-25.

Eurostat Comext, dataset DS-045409 (EU27 extra-EU trade, monthly, HS 290250) — aggregate series and the complete partner dimension:

UN Comtrade, annual, HS 290250, 30-economy panel (2020–2025), and monthly customs returns for India and the United States (July 2025 – June 2026):

Public documents.

Method notes. Eurostat Comext quantity is reported in units of 100 kg and has been converted to tonnes; “implied EUR/t” is reported value divided by reported quantity for the same month and the same partner, and is a customs average across all grades and contract terms inside the six-digit code, not a market price assessment. Partner shares are computed on the complete Comext partner dimension after removing the intra-EU aggregate row and the 27 member states, so the rows are the full extra-EU picture rather than a sample; the residual “Countries and territories n.e.s.” row is a category in the Comext dimension and not a country. For UN Comtrade, rows with a second partner code or a mode-of-transport breakdown were excluded, and where a reporter filed several customs procedures the all-procedures total (C00) was used. Annual aggregates are computed on a fixed core panel of reporters present in every year 2020–2025, so coverage changes cannot masquerade as growth; 2025 annual data is first-reported and subject to revision. Where a reporter filed value without net weight, no unit value is shown. The capacity, investment, duty and company statements in the analysis section are attributed to the published documents listed above and are not derived from the customs data; nothing in this article is a forecast, and nothing in it is derived by interpolating or extrapolating a price series.

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