Participants in the European butadiene market have been navigating through quite a turbulent environment throughout 2025. It has proved a year of abysmal records. The monthly contract price (MCP) went into the most extended losing streak since at least 2018 in April 2025. The MCP has been on a downtrend for 10 months now, plummeting from €1,050/t in March 2025 to €700/t in January 2026. This drop has far outstripped that in feedstock naphtha value in the same period: butadiene MCP has lost about 33.3% and naphtha has only 13.5%. Uncertain outlook for end-user demand remains the greatest concern affecting sentiments in the BD and the adjacent markets.

   In September, Arlanxeo stated it was going to shut its loss-making synthetic rubber facility in Port Jerome, France, permanently. The company stopped the plant with the annual capacity of 120,000 t of PBR and 20,000 t of E-SBR for a planned turnaround in September and never restarted it after the announcement. Reminder: the production site used to have BD delivered from ExxonMobil’s unit in Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon, France, by pipeline but had to switch to delivery by rail after the closedown of ExxonMobil’s site back in 2024. A market source shared the information that Butachimie, another major European BD consumer, was mulling over the permanent closure of its adiponitrile (ADN) facility in Chalampe, France, but the company declined to confirm it formally at press time. Reminder: the plant is designed to consume up to 1,000 t of BD a day when fully operational. Invista – a co-owner of Butachimie – operates two other ADN facilities in the United States and China, and the French production site appears to be in the most challenging position compared with the others due to higher production costs and weak domestic demand.

   Weak demand along the BD value chain in Europe, without any signs of fundamental improvement in 2026 seen, has driven trade in the locally produced material out of the region. As BD export to Asia remains the primary focus for many European market players, European prices have become especially sensitive to developments in the Far East. In 2025, at least 16 vessels were fixed to transport an estimated 152,000 t of BD from Europe to Asia, according to ChemCourier’s data. To compare, 2024 saw just 10 vessels chartered for the deep-sea export of about 120,500 t of BD from Europe. This surge in exports has happened despite a series of olefin plant closedowns across Europe, which suggests that regional demand was decreasing at a faster pace than supply. Reminder: in 2025, Versalis has ceased operations at two Italian crackers, one in Brindisi in March and the other in Priolo in July.

   The European BD market will continue transforming in 2026 and 2027. While there is little optimism about demand along the supply chain (see the Macroeconomics part of ChemCouriers butadiene contract price forecast), CC4 and BD supply is poised to contract further in the region once INEOS commissions its Project One, an 1.45 million-tpy ethane cracker, in Antwerp, Belgium, at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027. The facility is expected to meet a substantial part of regional demand for ethylene without producing CC4. Some conventional naphtha crackers are scheduled for the permanent closure around that time. TotalEnergies is going to halt one out of its two crackers in Antwerp permanently by end 2027. Dow announced it would close down its cracker in Bohlen, Germany, by Q4 2027. All in all, expectations of dwindling supply and persistently weak demand suggest that the European BD market is moving towards self-sufficiency, with slimming chances for the export to Asia in the coming years.