1. Review of Cyclohexanone Market in 2025
The domestic cyclohexanone market will face significant downward pressure in 2025.
In 2025, the price of cyclohexanone in Shandong Province showed a clear downward trend. At the beginning of the year, the price of cyclohexanone was relatively high. With changes in the market supply and demand pattern, the price gradually fluctuated and fell. In the second quarter, the price of cyclohexanone experienced a significant decline, falling from April 1 to June 30, a drop of 11.72%; the year-to-date decline was 27.84%.
2. Analysis of Factors Affecting Cyclohexanone Market Prices in 2025
Supply and Demand Game: Ample Supply vs. Weak Demand
（1）Supply Side
In 2025, the cyclohexanone industry continued to increase its production capacity. This expansion, coupled with stable production by individual companies, led to a sustained release of cyclohexanone supply in the market. The new capacity failed to create effective differentiated competition and instead exacerbated the pressure of homogeneous supply.
（2） Demand Side
In 2025, downstream industries such as chemical fibers and pharmaceuticals primarily relied on immediate needs for cyclohexanone procurement. Downstream integrated projects reduced their external procurement needs, and industries like caprolactam strengthened their self-sufficiency, resulting in sluggish demand transmission in the cyclohexanone market. This supply-demand imbalance became the core driving force behind the price decline.
Cost transmission: Weak raw material prices drag down
As a core raw material, benzene prices fluctuated downwards in 2025, with a significant drop in April and other periods, weakening the support for cyclohexanone prices from the cost side. Although benzene experienced short-term rebounds at times, the overall trend of weak costs remained unchanged. Cyclohexanone companies faced narrowing room for cost control and price negotiation, and the poor cost transmission further suppressed market prices.
3. 2026 Cyclohexanone Market Outlook: Market Evolution Under Multiple Variables
Supply and demand dynamics: Capacity growth slows, demand awaits activation.
1. Supply and Capacity/Output
Domestic cyclohexanone production capacity is expected to continue growing in 2026, but at a slower pace, with companies focusing more on improving capacity utilization. Leading companies, leveraging their scale and technological advantages, may consolidate their market position through capacity optimization; small and medium-sized enterprises face cost and environmental pressures, limiting capacity release. Output will increase slightly with capacity adjustments, but the oversupply situation is unlikely to fundamentally reverse.
2. Demand Side
In 2025, demand growth in traditional downstream industries for cyclohexanone was weak, with pharmaceuticals and pesticides maintaining only basic needs. In 2026, emerging fields such as new energy materials are expected to become bright spots, with marginal improvements in demand for cyclohexanone expected in lithium batteries and solar cell auxiliary materials, but significant increases are unlikely in the short term. Overall demand recovery is slow, the supply-demand game continues, and oversupply pressure remains.
Imports and exports: Intensified competition between domestic and international markets
1. Exports
Cyclohexanone exports reached 74,300 tons in 2024 and 88,400 tons from January to November 2025, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.9%. Cyclohexanone exports are expected to continue their slight increase in 2026. Global demand for chemical products is diverging. Developing countries have potential demand for cyclohexanone due to industrial upgrading, but export growth is limited by trade policies and freight fluctuations. Meanwhile, domestic companies need to cope with competition from international counterparts and seek breakthroughs in price and quality; high value-added products may become a key driver of exports.
2. Imports
From 2018 to 2023, my country’s cyclohexanone imports fluctuated and decreased as domestic production capacity expanded. In 2024, imports reached 196 tons. In 2025, imports increased significantly, reaching 535.6 tons from January to November, a year-on-year increase of 173%. It is projected that cyclohexanone imports will continue to rise in 2026. High-quality overseas production capacity may fill the gap in domestic high-end demand, such as high-purity and special-specification cyclohexanone, creating differentiated competition in the domestic market and forcing domestic companies to upgrade their technology. The overall import and export pattern is unlikely to change the domestic market’s dominance, but external shocks will also affect the pace of price fluctuations.
Price Forecast: Consolidation and range-bound trading
Cyclohexanone prices are expected to fluctuate around the cost line and marginal changes in supply and demand in 2026, with no clear trend or unidirectional price movement anticipated. On the cost side, a temporary rebound in the benzene market due to refining adjustments and fluctuations in international oil prices will support cyclohexanone prices. On the supply and demand side, a stronger-than-expected recovery in downstream demand (such as increased production in the new energy sector) could alleviate oversupply pressure and drive price recovery. However, given the backdrop of oversupply and weak demand recovery, in extreme circumstances, unforeseen factors (such as concentrated plant maintenance or sharp fluctuations in raw material prices) could cause prices to briefly break out of the range, but this is unlikely to be sustained.
Opportunities and challenges coexist; focus on structural upgrading
The cyclohexanone market will remain in an adjustment cycle in 2026. Companies need to focus on technological upgrades (such as green production and high-end product R&D) and supply chain collaboration (binding with downstream industries and optimizing raw material procurement) to address multi-dimensional challenges related to supply and demand, costs, and import/export. Although prices are unlikely to see a substantial reversal in the short term, the emergence of new demands and accelerated industry consolidation will accumulate momentum for long-term healthy development. High-quality companies are expected to seize opportunities amidst the volatility and reshape the market landscape.
Post time: Dec-30-2025