Plastic Additive Prices: 8 Price Guides, Price Drivers and Market Trends

A plastic additive price is the price per kilogram or tonne of an additive or of its raw material, and only a few of them are published anywhere for free: titanium dioxide pigment entered the United States at USD 3,200 per tonne in 2025, and antimony averaged USD 25 per pound in the same year, both figures from the US Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries. For most of the 43 additive families there is no free, dated, verifiable number at all, so where does a buyer look?

This reference answers that question in five parts: eight price guides, six data sources ranked from free and primary to paid and indicative, eight verified price series with their basis and year, six documented drivers that move a price, and a six-item checklist for comparing quotes. Every part traces back to the 43 families of plastic additives, each with its own price logic, from a bulk mineral filler at a few hundred dollars a tonne to a speciality stabilizer with no public price at all.

The article moves from cost logic to price sources, to the eight verified numbers, to the six price drivers, to reading a quote, to the price movements of 2025 and 2026, and finally to how these guides are corrected. Cost in use, not price per kilogram alone, decides what an additive adds to a compound, and the plastic additives database carries a price field on each of its 437 substance records. Market size is a different question, answered on a separate page, because a price and a market total do not answer the same query.

The table below lists all 8 price guides this reference publishes, in the order they go live.

Live day = the day the guide publishes. Until then the row is listed without a link.

What Does a Plastic Additive Cost?#

A plastic additive can cost less than a bulk mineral filler or several times more than the polymer it protects, and the gap follows the same split that separates volume from value: fillers were more than 19.5 of the 36.7 million tonnes of additives consumed worldwide in 2023 (Ceresana) but a small share of the money, while stabilizers are a few percent of the weight and a large share of it. By weight, plasticizers account for 34 percent of global additive consumption, fillers 28 percent, flame retardants 13 percent, antioxidants 6 percent, heat stabilizers 5 percent, colorants 2 percent and light stabilizers 1 percent. The mineral fillers that dominate the tonnage are priced at USD 160 to 590 per tonne, the raw-material unit values described later in this guide.

Why filler, colorant and stabilizer prices span three orders of magnitude#

Three price classes explain almost every additive quote: ground minerals at USD 160 to 590 per tonne, commodity organics such as plasticizers and waxes, and speciality pigments and stabilizers, where titanium dioxide alone entered the United States at USD 3,200 per tonne in 2025 (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026). Three classes cover almost every price point in the guides below:

• Bulk minerals, such as kaolin at USD 160 per tonne, barite at USD 220 per tonne and talc at USD 330 per tonne, all US average unit values for 2024e (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025).
• Commodity organics, such as plasticizers and processing waxes, where no single free price level exists but direction is documented and tracked in the plasticizer section below.
• Speciality pigments and stabilizers, such as titanium dioxide pigment at USD 3,200 per tonne (2025) and antimony metal at USD 25 per pound (2025 average), priced well above the bulk minerals because of processing, purity and regulatory cost.

Pigment chemistry sits at the top of this range, separating colorants for plastics from the bulk fillers beneath them, and this guide never converts silently between USD per pound and USD per tonne without showing the arithmetic.

Cost in use: what an additive costs per tonne of compound#

The number that decides a formulation is not the price per kilogram of the additive but its cost in use, the cost it adds to one tonne of compound: the cost per kilogram of compound is the sum of each ingredient's weight fraction times its price. This is a derived method, not a single published formula:

• Cost per kilogram of compound = sum (weight fraction of ingredient x price of ingredient)
• Cost per litre of compound = cost per kilogram of compound x compound density

Fillers lower the cost per kilogram of a compound but raise its density, so the cost per litre falls by less than the cost per kilogram alone suggests. A masterbatch follows the same logic at one remove: masterbatch cost in use equals the masterbatch price multiplied by the let-down fraction, and masterbatch additive content typically runs 40 to 65 weight percent at a let-down of 1 to 5 percent, so a stronger masterbatch at a lower let-down can cost less per finished part even at a higher price per kilogram. Dosage magnifies this effect: two additives priced identically per kilogram but dosed at 0.1 weight percent against 30 weight percent differ by a factor of 300 in cost in use. Working this arithmetic is the job of the additive dosage and cost-in-use calculator.

Where Plastic Additive Prices Come From: 6 Data Sources#

Plastic additive prices come from 6 kinds of source: government mineral statistics, trade statistics, price reporting agencies, supplier price-increase announcements, market commentary and business-to-business marketplaces, and only the first two are free, dated and primary. The six sit in a hierarchy from free and verifiable to paid and indicative, and each publishes a different kind of number: a unit value, a percentage, an assessed price or a single offer. The table below lists what each source covers and what this reference actually publishes from it.

Government statistics: the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries#

The United States Geological Survey publishes a free annual unit value for every mineral commodity that matters to plastics additives, and the Mineral Commodity Summaries state the basis of each one: a landed duty-paid import price for titanium dioxide pigment, an ex-works price for milled talc, and an Argus CIF assessment for antimony. The series appears once a year, in January or February, naming the commodity, the basis, the period and, where relevant, the assessor behind it, which is how an Argus antimony assessment becomes a free, citable number through "US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 and 2026". This reference draws its eight verified price series directly from these summaries, none averaged against another source, and the USGS commodity PDFs sit in the source list at the end of this article rather than as links from the main text.

Trade statistics: import unit values and HS codes#

The second free source is trade statistics: dividing the declared value of an import line by its quantity gives a unit value per HS code and period, which is the best public proxy for the additives that no agency assesses. UN Comtrade, Eurostat Comext and the US Census Bureau's USITC DataWeb all publish this data without charge, and the classification that makes it usable is the Harmonized Tariff Schedule: titanium dioxide falls under HTS 3206.11.0000 at 6 percent ad valorem, antimony oxide under 2825.80.0000 duty-free, TBBPA under 2908.19.2500 at 5.5 percent, and deca and octaBDE under 2909.30.0700 at 5.5 percent. This site computes its own unit values from these codes rather than quoting a third party's derived number, and the full set of codes and duty rates, once a code's classification is settled, is listed under plastic additive HS codes and tariffs.

Price reporting agencies: ICIS, Argus, ChemAnalyst and SunSirs#

Price reporting agencies assess weekly prices for the commodity additives, and they are the reason a DOP or a stearate number exists at all, but their assessments are sold, not published. ICIS, Argus, S&P Global Commodity Insights, ChemAnalyst, Business Analytiq and SunSirs (100ppi) each track a slice of the additive complex, DOP, DOTP, DINP, titanium dioxide and calcium and zinc stearates among them, through paid subscriptions or registration-gated portals; a direct check of ChemAnalyst during research for this page returned an access-denied response, and SunSirs requires a login. This site never republishes a paywalled assessment, and quotes an agency figure only where a free primary source has already reproduced it, exactly as the USGS does when it cites Argus for the antimony series above.

Supplier price-increase announcements#

Additive producers announce price increases in public, in euros per tonne or as a percentage, and those letters are the only regular, dated, free signal of direction for formulated additives. Perstorp, BASF, Clariant and Lanxess each publish these letters on their own newsroom pages, usually tied to a feedstock move or a supply disruption. The announcements that currently dominate search results for this topic are 2026 releases from BASF not yet recorded in our source library with their exact wording and percentage, so this section states the mechanism and the companies rather than a figure or a date; the news section tracks each release as it is added. Some producers frame a price increase as a cost saving instead, as when Songwon describes its One Pack System blends as able to "lower overall additivation costs" (Songwon, company product literature), a claim this reference attributes to the company. The companies behind these letters are profiled in the plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers directory.

Marketplace offers from India and China#

Business-to-business marketplaces show a number immediately, which is why they rank, but a marketplace offer states neither the grade nor the delivery basis nor the date, so it cannot be compared with a second offer. A live search on 2026-09-24 found Made-in-China listing a plastic additive at "US$2.20-2.80, 1,000 kg (MOQ)" against a bare CAS number, and IndiaMART listing another at "INR 160/kg, 25 kg pack", neither disclosing a grade, an Incoterm or a quotation date. Alibaba, Echemi and Knowde publish the same kind of indicative offer for additives sourced mainly from India and China. A verified alternative to a marketplace listing is a profiled producer, listed on plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers in India and on plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers in China.

Which source to use for which additive#

The right source depends on where the additive sits in the supply chain: minerals and pigments have a USGS unit value, halogen and antimony raw materials have a USGS price and a trade-control history, plasticizers have published commentary and antidumping findings, and every formulated stabilizer, modifier or masterbatch has no public price at all. Reading the source table above from top to bottom traces this exactly: government and trade statistics are the only free-and-primary rows, price reporting agencies and market commentary sit in the paid-or-partial row, and marketplaces sit alone at the bottom, offering a number with no basis behind it.

Verified Plastic Additive and Raw Material Prices#

Eight price series meet the standard of this reference, which is a published figure with a stated basis, a named source and a year: titanium dioxide, antimony, bromine, talc, mica, barite, kaolin and diatomite. Every other additive named in this guide, from carbon black to the calcium and zinc stearates, has a documented driver and a documented grade logic but no free published price, and the table below states that gap as plainly as it states the eight verified figures. Nothing in this table is estimated or averaged across sources.

These are raw-material unit values in the United States, not delivered prices for a compound-grade additive. A treated, coated or narrow-distribution grade sells above them.

Titanium dioxide price: USD 3,200 per tonne (2025)#

Titanium dioxide pigment entered the United States at USD 3,200 per tonne in 2025, against USD 3,170 in 2024 and USD 2,920 in 2021, on a landed duty-paid import basis (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026). US production reached about 1.0 million tonnes in 2025e, from five facilities in four states, valued at roughly USD 3 billion, against a world pigment capacity of 9.9 million tonnes, of which China held about 61 percent and the United States 1.36 million tonnes. US imports came mainly from Canada, 45 percent, and China, 11 percent, over 2021 to 2024, under HTS code 3206.11.0000 at 6 percent ad valorem. The USGS names ground calcium carbonate, precipitated calcium carbonate, kaolin and talc as substitutes when a formulation trades opacity for cost. Grade and regulatory detail sits on titanium dioxide in plastics.

Antimony price: USD 25 per pound (2025 average)#

Antimony averaged USD 25 per pound in 2025, against USD 10.24 in 2024 and USD 5.49 in 2023, on the Argus assessment for 99.65 percent antimony CIF quoted by the US Geological Survey. This series prices antimony metal, not antimony trioxide: the Sb2O3 price that plastics buyers actually pay tends to follow the metal price but is not identical to it, and our source library underlying this reference holds no separate antimony trioxide figure. Within 2025 the price moved sharply, from a peak of USD 27.50 per pound in June down to USD 20.30 in November, tied to supply concentration rather than to demand. World mine production reached about 110,000 tonnes in 2025e, led by China at 40,000 tonnes, and US antimony oxide imports rose to about 39,000 tonnes in 2025e from 14,000 tonnes in 2023, with China supplying 66 percent of those imports over 2021 to 2024. The synergist itself is described on antimony trioxide.

Bromine and mineral filler prices: talc, kaolin, barite, mica and diatomite#

Bromine, the raw material of brominated flame retardants, had a United States import unit value of USD 2.70 per kilogram of bromine content in 2024, and the mineral fillers sit between USD 160 and USD 590 per tonne. Brominated flame retardants and clear brine drilling fluids are bromine's two leading global applications, and world production outside the United States reached about 400,000 tonnes in 2024e, led by Israel at 140,000 tonnes; US bromine imports came 83 percent from Israel. Among the mineral fillers, talc carries the largest share of its US output into plastics, 32 percent of US talc end use, at a milled, ex-works price of USD 330 per tonne (2024e); kaolin, barite, mica and diatomite round out the comparators at USD 160, 220, 300 to 310 and 590 per tonne respectively, each a US average unit value for 2024e (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025). Loading levels for each mineral are set out on fillers for plastics.

Plasticizer prices: direction, not level#

No free source publishes a plasticizer price level, but the direction is documented: the Chinese DOP price fell by RMB 1,700 to 1,750 per tonne between January and November 2025 (ResourceWise, Global Plasticizers Market: 2025 Review and 2026 Outlook), with Chinese DOP imports down 42 percent year on year and exports up 35 percent (January to September 2025), consistent with oversupply. Trade measures move other plasticizer prices in the opposite direction: US antidumping duties apply to DOTP from Turkey, Malaysia, Taiwan and Poland, a 15 percent US tariff hit Evonik Oxeno's DINP, new DINP capacity came onstream at Deza in the Czech Republic, and Polynt cut its TOTM prices after an early-year high. ResourceWise's stated 2026 outlook is "ample supply, flat demand, and a focus on cost and portfolio resilience rather than volume growth". The plasticizer substances behind these movements, DOP/DEHP, DOTP, DINP, DINCH and TOTM, are compared on plasticizers for plastics.

What Drives Plastic Additive Prices? 6 Price Drivers#

Six things move a plastic additive price: the cost of its feedstock, how concentrated its supply is, the duties and tariffs on its trade, its grade and product form, the regulations that restrict or replace it, and the dosage the formulation needs. Each of the six is documented below with a dated example, in the same canonical family order used throughout this site.

Feedstock and raw material cost#

Every additive inherits the price of its feedstock, which is why a brominated flame retardant follows bromine at USD 2.70 per kilogram of bromine content (2024) and a white masterbatch follows titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide pigment depends on a mined and processed feedstock base large enough to support a 9.9 million tonne world pigment capacity and a US production value of about USD 3 billion in 2025e (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 and 2026). The mined mineral fillers, kaolin, talc, barite, mica and diatomite, follow the same rule at a smaller scale: their USD 160 to 590 per tonne range is set largely by mining and milling cost, not chemistry. Flame retardants, colorants and fillers feel this driver hardest, because their raw material is the largest single cost component of the finished additive.

Supply concentration and export controls#

A price moves fastest when one country holds most of the supply: China required export licences for antimony ore, metal, oxides and compounds in August 2024 and banned antimony exports to the United States in December 2024, and the antimony price nearly doubled between those two dates (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026). China accounts for about 40,000 of the 110,000 tonnes of world antimony mine production in 2025e and supplied 66 percent of US antimony oxide imports over 2021 to 2024, a concentration that leaves little slack when a licence requirement slows shipments. Titanium dioxide shows a milder version of the same pattern, with China holding about 61 percent of world pigment capacity in 2025e. Flame retardants and colorants carry the largest exposure to this driver, because their supply base is the most geographically concentrated of any additive class.

Antidumping duties and tariffs#

Two identical grades can carry different prices in the same country because of where they were made: the United States applies antidumping duties to DOTP from Turkey, Malaysia, Taiwan and Poland, and a 15 percent tariff hit Evonik Oxeno's DINP. An open tariff-classification question for DPHP was still unresolved heading into 2026, which leaves that plasticizer's landed cost uncertain until US Customs settles it. Ordinary import duties layer on top of any antidumping measure: titanium dioxide carries a 6 percent ad valorem rate under HTS 3206.11.0000, antimony oxide under HTS 2825.80.0000 enters duty-free, and TBBPA under HTS 2908.19.2500 carries 5.5 percent. Plasticizers feel this driver hardest, followed by flame retardants, because both categories have an active antidumping or tariff history that fillers and colorants do not.

Grade, purity and product form, including masterbatch#

The same chemical is sold as several products: a technical powder, a food-contact grade, a dust-free pastille and a masterbatch, and each carries a different price. Grade premiums appear even within a single mineral: diatomite's filtration grade sells at about USD 790 per tonne against a US average price of USD 590 (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025). A masterbatch adds a second layer of form-driven pricing: additive content typically runs 40 to 65 weight percent of the carrier at a let-down of 1 to 5 percent, so a stronger masterbatch at a lower let-down can cost less per finished part even at a higher price per kilogram. Compliance status is part of the specification too, since REACH registration is held per legal entity and substance, so a compliant grade differs in price from a technical grade sharing its CAS number elsewhere. The forms behind these price differences are compared under additive product forms.

Regulation, restriction and substitution#

A restriction changes a price by removing a cheap option: when a halogenated flame retardant is restricted, demand moves to aluminium trihydroxide, magnesium hydroxide or a phosphorus compound, which the US Geological Survey itself names as substitutes for brominated flame retardants. The same pattern applies to antimony trioxide, where USGS names selected organic compounds and hydrated aluminium oxide as the alternatives a formulator reaches for once supply tightens. Compliance amplifies the cost: because REACH registration is held per legal entity and substance, moving to a substitute chemistry often means qualifying a new supplier as well as a new formula. The restrictions themselves, their instruments, entry numbers and dates, are tracked under plastic additive regulations.

Dosage and volume: how much you actually buy#

The dosage decides what a price means: a biocide at 0.001 to 1 weight percent and a plasticizer at 10 to 70 weight percent can carry the same price per kilogram and still differ by three orders of magnitude in what they add to a tonne of compound. Reinforcements typically run 15 to 30 weight percent, flame retardants 2 to 28 weight percent and UV stabilizers 0.05 to 10 weight percent, so the cost-in-use method described earlier is the only way to compare two additives fairly once dosage ranges differ this widely. Typical levels per family are listed under additive dosage levels in plastics.

The table below collects all 6 drivers with their documented example and the families each one hits hardest.

How to Read and Compare a Plastic Additive Quote#

Two additive quotes can be compared only when both state the same six things, and the reason is visible in the public data itself: the USGS prices titanium dioxide landed duty-paid and talc ex-works, and those two bases are not the same number. A quote that omits the delivery basis, the active content or the legal entity behind the registration is a single, isolated offer, no more useful than the marketplace listings described above.

The six items that make two additive quotes comparable are listed below.

1. Fix the grade and the specification, not the chemical name.
2. Fix the delivery basis and the currency.
3. State the active content and, for a masterbatch, the let-down ratio.
4. State the volume, the packaging and the minimum order quantity.
5. Ask which legal entity holds the REACH registration and any food-contact notification.
6. Convert every offer to cost in use per tonne of compound before comparing.

Send one specification to verified suppliers and compare the quotes on the same basis through the plastic additive supplier finder.

Buying from the producer or from a distributor#

Below a certain volume an additive is bought from a distributor rather than from the producer, and the four that carry most plastics additives in Europe and North America are Brenntag, Univar Solutions, IMCD and Azelis. Brenntag, headquartered in Essen, reported revenue of EUR 16.8 billion in 2023 from more than 600 locations in 72 countries, the largest of the four by that measure. Univar Solutions, based in Downers Grove, Illinois, has operated as a private company under Apollo ownership since August 2023, at an enterprise value of USD 8.1 billion, while IMCD (Rotterdam) and Azelis (Antwerp) complete the group. None of the four publishes a standard break volume, margin or lead time in our source library. The four are profiled under plastic additive distributors.

Plastic Additive Price Trends in 2025 and 2026#

Two movements dominate the additive price picture for 2025 and 2026: a flame-retardant raw material that multiplied in price and a plasticizer complex that softened. Antimony moved from USD 5.49 per pound in 2023 to a 2025 average of USD 25, after a peak of USD 27.50 in June and a partial retreat to USD 20.30 by November (US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026), driven by China's export licence requirement of August 2024 and its December 2024 export ban to the United States. The Chinese DOP price moved the other way, falling RMB 1,700 to 1,750 per tonne between January and November 2025 (ResourceWise, 2025), while titanium dioxide stayed close to flat, at USD 3,170 per tonne in 2024 against USD 3,200 in 2025e.

Price increases announced by the largest additive companies#

Formulated additives have no price index, so the public record of their direction is the price-increase letter, which BASF, Clariant, Lanxess and Perstorp all publish. These letters apply against a market that analysts size between USD 43.5 billion (2023, MarketsandMarkets) and USD 63.71 billion (2025, Precedence Research), so even a percentage-only announcement moves a large base. BASF's 2026 releases currently dominate search results for this topic, but this reference records a company name and a mechanism only until the release itself, its exact wording, percentage and date, is added to the underlying source library with a verifiable URL. The companies behind these letters are ranked by additive sales under largest plastic additive companies.

Capacity additions and plant closures in 2026#

New capacity is the slowest but most durable price driver, and four additions were announced for 2026: Rianlon in Malaysia in January, BASF's hindered amine light stabilizer expansion announced on 21 April, Clariant's Exolit OP plant expansion at Daya Bay announced on 5 June, and Adeka's TRANSPAREX clarifier plant in South Korea announced on 25 August. Each of these four is written here as announced, not operating, because none has a reported start-up date in our source library yet. Capacity can also fall: UK titanium dioxide pigment capacity dropped from 315 thousand tonnes in 2024 to 165 thousand tonnes in 2025, even though world capacity, at 9.9 million tonnes, stayed close to unchanged. A capacity addition takes months to years to reach full output, so its price effect shows up later and lasts longer than a tariff or an export licence.

How These Price Guides Are Built, Sourced and Corrected#

Every price on this page and in the 8 guides below it is a published figure with a stated basis, a named source and a year, and the guides are reviewed quarterly. That review checks four things against the source list rather than against any internal estimate.

• Publish only a figure with a named source, a stated basis and a year.
• Use only free primary data, or data freely reproduced by a primary source, never a paywalled assessment, a marketplace offer or a competitor's number.
• State direction, quoted with its author and date, wherever no level exists.
• Leave a visible gap where the data does not exist, rather than publish an estimate.

The US Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries that anchor this page's eight verified prices publish once a year, in January or February, so this reference refreshes those series annually and reviews commentary and supplier announcements quarterly in between. Corrections follow our editorial policy: independence, sources and corrections, which states how a figure gets added, checked and, when a newer official source disagrees with it, replaced.

How Plastic Additive Prices Relate to the Plastic Additives Market#

A price is what one tonne of one additive costs; a market size is what the whole industry sells in a year, and the analysts who publish the second disagree by a factor of about 1.5, from USD 43.5 billion for 2023 (MarketsandMarkets) to USD 63.71 billion for 2025 (Precedence Research), with IMARC placing 2025 at USD 58.1 billion. Volume tells a related but separate story: global additive consumption reached 36.7 million tonnes in 2023 (Ceresana), with fillers accounting for more than 19.5 million tonnes, plasticizers for more than 8 million tonnes, and Asia-Pacific consuming more than half of that total. This reference never states a single "the market is" figure for that reason, and the full reconciliation of the analyst spread sits on the plastic additives market page rather than here.

Which prices appear in the plastic additives database#

Price is a field on the substance record, not a page of its own: a substance page carries a price-range and price-driver block when our source library holds a source for it, which is why only 8 additives have a full price guide on this site. The same 437 substance records that make up the plastic additives database each carry a family, a CAS number, a dosage range and a regulatory status alongside whatever price data exists, so a buyer researching a specific substance finds its price context on the substance page even when no dedicated price guide exists for it yet. Recurring sourcing modifiers such as "price", "price per kg" and "hs code" appear across more than 15 seed queries in this reference's query research, and they are treated as attributes of the substance template rather than as separate pages.

What this price section does not publish#

This reference prices additives, not plastics: the weekly polyethylene and polypropylene quotations that rank alongside this page are resin prices, outside its scope. Three categories are excluded from every price guide on this site.

• Commodity resin prices, such as LLDPE, LDPE and PP, a different entity covered by dedicated resin price services.
• Paywalled index values from ICIS, Argus, ChemAnalyst or SunSirs, regardless of how the figure was obtained.
• Estimated or modelled prices for additives with no public source, including carbon black, polyethylene wax, calcium and zinc stearates, calcium carbonate and silica, where this guide states the gap rather than filling it.

A reader looking for the current price of plastic resin will not find that number here. It belongs to a resin price service, not to a plastic additive reference.

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