May 27th, 2026
CCM Market Insight (May 2026)
Market Overview
The CCM market remained in a supply-demand tightening pattern in April-May 2026, with prices staying firm at high levels.
Strict environmental inspections and the complete phase-out of traditional shaft kilns remained as the core policies, leading to capacity limitations and stable high prices.
Supply - Demand Situation
Ongoing strict control: Environmental inspections and kiln upgrading policies in Liaoning’ s main production areas strictly enforced shutdowns, prevented unauthorized production restarts, and further tightened supply.
Slow new capacity release: Clean kilns(e.g., rotary and flash kilns) have long construction periods and cannot produce immediately.
Among the few enterprises already operating such kilns, capacity is quite limited.
In the short term, their output cannot fill the gap left by large-scale shutdowns of traditional kilns.
Moreover, due to intensive use in recent months, some flash kilns have broken down and had to stop for maintenance and further affected the output.
Low inventory: After a prolonged period of inventory reduction, the overall inventory of the whole industry continues decreasing, further supporting the prices to be kept firm and high.
Price Trend
Market prices remained largely stable with no significant fluctuations. Orders were mainly for immediate needs.
And supported by previous cost increases and continuously low inventory, enterprises maintained a stable pricing strategy, and the market showed strong resistance to price drops.
Price of 90% CCM with qualified purity and available supply increased by approx. 200 RMB/ton, prices are firm with no much room for bargaining.
Some producers' 90% CCM is off-spec, with actual purity just above 89%, whose price can be 50-100 RMB/ton lower than qualified 90% purity.
92% CCM is even more scarce and its price is higher.
Market Outlook
Overall, the phase-out of traditional reflective kilns and the supply shortage caused by environmental policies will continue.
CCM prices are expected to remain at a high and stable level for some time more.
In the longer term, as new compliant kilns and capacity are gradually released, the price increase may slow down, but prices will still remain high and will not return to last year's lower levels.
