rCB Has No Public Price: A Data Point That Doesn't Exist, and the Reference System Around It

In one line: Virgin carbon black is up more than 55% year-to-date, with coal tar accounting for 65–80% of cost — yet recovered carbon black (rCB) still has no independent public price series. That gap is not our oversight; it is the state of the industry.

1. Virgin carbon black: one clear upward line

(Sources: China Coking Information monthly report, China Coking Industry Association · statement on recent price movements, China Rubber Industry Association)

2. The rise is on the cost side: coal tar

• Coal tar accounts for 65–80% of carbon black production cost
• Year-to-date: coking coal up about 77%, coke up about 36%
• Some coal tar auction prices are approaching the December 2022 historic high

(Source: China Rubber Industry Association official statement)

What this means: the increase is cost-push, not demand-pull. The distinction matters — cost-push increases differ in downstream acceptance and in how long they hold.

3. The import–export "scissors"

(Source: Carbon Black and White Carbon Black Branch, China Rubber Industry Association)

How to read it: export prices rising, import prices rising faster, and import volume halved. In the same price cycle, the value proposition of overseas product entering China is falling quickly — which usually signals room for domestic substitution.

4. But rCB's price cannot be looked up

This is the single most important thing to state:

There is no independent public price series for rCB in official channels or announcements.

We verified this: it is not that we failed to find it — the data does not exist:

• Virgin carbon black has official monthly reports and branch-level trade data — rCB has no corresponding official series
• Why: rCB currently trades mainly on bilateral long-term contracts, with price terms not publicly disclosed

So we cannot give you an "rCB price". Anything presented as one would be an estimate, not a quote.

5. The question therefore becomes: how to build a traceable reference system

When a market lacks a benchmark, there are two paths: invent a number, or build a verifiable method. We chose the latter.

Our reference range (ABP) comes from an explicit formula:

ABP(t) = AF(t) × VF(t) × 1000

Base and layering: - Base period 2025-01, base value 1000 - Classification per the ASTM D8632 two-parameter matrix (R value + toluene transmittance grade + inorganic content grade) - Layers: P1 refined / P2 standard / P3 industrial (each with a different ρ)

The primary anchor: China's carbon black export average price (HS 28030000, all grades) — from the official monthly import/export tables of the Carbon Black and White Carbon Black Branch, China Rubber Industry Association, traceable month by month.

6. What we explicitly do not do (this matters more than the numbers)

An index without stated boundaries is more dangerous than no index. So these limits are deliberately written into the method:

In one line: we provide a shape-credible, traceable relative trend, while the plausibility of absolute prices still requires calibration. What can be published and what is withheld — and why — is flagged entry by entry in the data.

7. What this means for the rCB industry

1. Cost-push increases widen rCB's price advantage — but only if it can be measured. Rising virgin carbon black prices should improve rCB's substitution economics. But if neither side can produce a comparable reference, negotiation falls back on intuition.

2. The absence of a public price is itself a maturity indicator. A category without independent public pricing usually means: opaque transactions, insufficient standardisation, long-contract dominated. All three describe rCB today.

3. Standardisation is the precondition for pricing. That is why we built the ASTM D8632 classification matrix into the method — you can only price in tiers once you can define tiers.

4. For buyers and users: absent a public price, establishing an internal reference line from "anchor benchmark + layer coefficient" is better grounded than picking a number — at minimum it can be traced and challenged.

8. Scope and disclaimer

The rCB reference range (ABP) is research reference material — not a transaction price, not a quote, and not a basis for trading. The primary anchor is the virgin carbon black export average price (official monthly industry data), applicable only to standard grade and below. Virgin carbon black price data comes from industry associations (China Coking Industry Association / China Rubber Industry Association) — an industry-body basis, not a government release.

Sources

Data floor: figures are drawn from official industry-association releases and official monthly reports (industry-body basis, labelled as such); no commercial data-vendor sources are used.

Level key: L1 = government / international organisation; L2 = international standards body / state think-tank; L3 = industry association / corporate self-disclosure / official-media citation / third-party public-data re-processor (grey — original source must be named); L4 = commercial data vendor / self-media (prohibited by project policy).

Basis note: all virgin carbon black price data here come from industry associations (L3, industry-body basis), not government releases. Our rCB reference range is research reference material, a different category of information from the industry data above.

Data current as of 2026-10-10. Each record is retrievable by record ID via the site's data index or the MCP endpoint.