Three Countries Take the Whole Acrylonitrile Book
US acrylonitrile exports have halved since 2019, and every tonne of the decline is Asian. Turkiye, Mexico and Peru now take 96 percent of what leaves the country, one of them on a metronome, which changes what your supplier can say yes to on 2027 volume.
Korea's customs office logged 98,187 tonnes of American acrylonitrile arriving in 2019.
In 2025 it logged 214.
Korea never stopped buying the molecule. Its total acrylonitrile import bill last year was $237m against $265m in 2019, within 11 percent of where it started.
The tonnes just came from somewhere else.
"When an export outlet closes, where does the tonnage actually go?"
Every Tonne of the Decline Was Asian
US exports of acrylonitrile ran 351,384 tonnes in 2019 and 167,533 tonnes in 2025, a 52% cut in six years. That looks like a demand story until you split the book by destination (chart below).
The East and South Asia block went from 225,112 tonnes to 128. Everything else went from 126,272 tonnes to 167,405, a gain of 33%.
Korea, Taiwan and India were 64% of the 2019 book between them.
A parcel of acrylonitrile moves in thousands of tonnes. The 128 that survive in that column are Indian, and at that size they are a sample shipment.
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