After New Year's Day, China's isopropanol market has shown a phased fluctuation characteristic of first rising, then stabilizing and then weakening. Its price trend is always driven by the coordinated interaction of three core factors: raw material costs, regional supply and demand, and market sentiment. Although the current market has experienced phased price adjustments, the overall profit pressure on the industry remains unchanged. Under the interweaving of multiple variables, the future market trend will present an overall pattern of short-term consolidation and medium-to-long-term gradual optimization in the game between cost support and demand constraints.

Looking back at the recent market performance, driven by the sharp rise in upstream raw material prices at the beginning of the month, the production cost of isopropanol increased significantly. Despite no obvious improvement in downstream demand, due to cost pressure, most manufacturers and cargo holders have successively raised their quotations, and the focus of market transactions has climbed accordingly. Affected by the downstream sentiment of "buying up but not buying down", terminal purchasing willingness has improved periodically, the market trading atmosphere has gradually warmed up, and trading volume has been released centrally. Among them, the South China market performed particularly well. Due to the concentrated execution of export orders by enterprises in the region, spot supply tended to be tight, and cargo holders had a strong sentiment of hoarding goods to push up prices. The regional price increase was relatively prominent, and the price gap with East China widened, which also attracted the inflow of some peripheral sources of goods, but actual transactions in the high-price range were sluggish. In the second half of the month, as prices climbed to a high level, terminal purchasing attitudes became increasingly cautious, the market's acceptance of high-price sources of goods was limited, overall trading activity declined, and the market entered a digestion and consolidation stage. Later, due to the continuous sluggishness in new order transactions, some intermediaries lowered their high-end quotations, and the market gradually entered a downward channel.

It is worth noting that although isopropanol prices have increased periodically, the increase in upstream raw material prices is more significant, leading to a continuous rise in production costs for manufacturers, and the entire industry is still in a state of loss. The profit gap between different production processes is relatively obvious. Among them, production units relying on purchased raw materials are under particularly prominent cost pressure, and the overall phenomenon of revenue and expenditure inversion in the industry is relatively serious. However, some integrated enterprises with raw material self-supply capacity have relatively alleviated their profit pressure by virtue of their own cost advantages, which will also form a certain supporting role for the isopropanol market and restrain a sharp decline in prices.

In the short term, the isopropanol market will maintain a consolidation pattern of "having a ceiling on the upside and a floor on the downside". On the cost side, the synchronous rise in the prices of the two raw materials has built a solid bottom support for the isopropanol market, effectively limiting the downward space for prices; however, the demand side is still weak, terminal purchases are mainly rigid demand, and acceptance of high-price sources of goods is low, which is difficult to support a continuous rise in prices. The market as a whole will be in a state of shock and consolidation, with a relatively limited range of price fluctuations.

In the medium and long term, the market trend still needs to focus on the sustainability of raw material price trends. If raw material prices can stabilize or fall steadily, it will effectively alleviate cost pressure on manufacturers and promote the gradual recovery of industry profits; on the contrary, if raw material prices remain high and the downward transmission of cost pressure is blocked, it is not ruled out that the industry operating rate will be further adjusted, and a new balance of market supply and demand will be achieved through capacity optimization. At the same time, with the development and upgrading of downstream related industries, demand for high-end isopropanol is expected to be gradually released, coupled with the potential improvement of the export market, which will inject new momentum into the long-term development of the industry.

In general, China's isopropanol market is in a recovery stage characterized by both cost-driven and demand-constrained factors. The short-term consolidation pattern is difficult to change, and in the medium and long term, it is expected to achieve sound development with the rational return of raw material prices and industrial structure optimization. Market participants need to pay close attention to fluctuations in raw material prices, changes in downstream demand and dynamics of industrial capacity adjustment, so as to reasonably avoid market risks and seize industry development opportunities.