Who Buys West Virginia's New Maleic Anhydride?
TCL Specialties made its first commercial sale of maleic anhydride out of New Martinsville this year, from a unit rated 40,500 tonnes. The United States imported 8,893 tonnes of the stuff in all of 2025, and exported 47,309. A plant that size does not land in an import gap, and the export column tells you what it has to price against.
There is a new maleic anhydride plant in West Virginia, and it is not small.
TCL Specialties, the American arm of Thirumalai Chemicals, told the Bombay exchange on January 2 that it had begun commercial operations at New Martinsville with a first sale of maleic anhydride.
The MAN unit is rated 40,500 tonnes a year, the food ingredients unit beside it 30,000 tonnes of malic and fumaric acid. Sole feedstock is n-butane, straight off the Marcellus-Utica.
The reflex read on a plant like that is import substitution. So we went and pulled the import number.
The United States imported 8,893 tonnes of maleic anhydride in all of 2025.
"If the plant isn't filling an import gap, whose tonnes is it taking?"
The answer sits in the column almost nobody opens (chart below).
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