Your Hydroquinone Second Source Went Dark Twice
Italy was 59 percent of America's hydroquinone imports in 2021 and has shipped 209 kilograms in the four years since. A rights-issue prospectus filed in Mumbai on Tuesday names the owner of that plant, and of the Indian one, and says both are down: judicial liquidation on March 17, shutdown on May 23. The import line is now 93 percent French, and the French flow has fallen every month since April.
In 2021 the largest single origin of American hydroquinone was Italy.
178 tonnes of it, 59% of everything the country imported that year, out of a country nobody puts on a diphenol map. Then it stopped. Italy has shipped 209 kilograms across the four years since, and nothing at all in 2026.
"Who was behind the Italian tonnes, and where did they go?"
We opened this line on October 2, the morning after Goodyear's board decided to close Bayport, one of three American plants that made hydroquinone as a merchant product. The read then was that the import book had already moved to France, and it had. What is new since is the eight published months of 2026 and a rights-issue prospectus filed in Mumbai on November 3, which finally names the owner of the origins France replaced.
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