In mid-April, the titanium dioxide market saw a coordinated price increase from domestic and international manufacturers. At the beginning of the week, Chemours announced a $100/ton price hike for titanium dioxide sold in the Asia-Pacific region. Mid-week, Longbai Group announced a 1500 yuan/ton increase, followed by nearly 20 other manufacturers, including Anada and Haifengxin, creating a synchronized price increase effect.

Despite being the traditional peak season of March and April, new orders in April were significantly lower than in March, with most orders being fulfilled from previous orders.

This situation is mainly due to the over-consumption of demand after the surge in previous orders. Previous orders were concentrated, primarily driven by downstream users' essential needs and restocking. Essential needs mainly consisted of purchases for regular production, while restocking involved stockpiling raw materials at low prices in anticipation of price increases. In reality, the supply side had a predominance of low-priced orders, while users were resistant to the price increases, resulting in poor overall order intake.

Around this time, some manufacturers cancelled orders, ranging from tens to hundreds or even thousands of tons. This mainly occurred because manufacturers paid more attention to distributors than to end users, showing a clear difference in treatment.

A significant reason for this is that manufacturers were using high-priced raw materials to fulfill low-priced orders, and they were unwilling to maintain a meager profit margin even during periods of rising prices.

Only after fulfilling previous low-priced orders would they receive new high-priced orders. Therefore, manufacturers primarily focused on how long their existing order backlog would last. Based on current information, May and June should be relatively stable.

After the surge in orders in March, a decrease in orders in April and May was both the norm and inevitable. During this period, even if manufacturers raised prices again, users might not necessarily buy. Therefore, end-user demand became crucial, and user raw material consumption became key.

Each manufacturer's situation is different. Some manufacturers have a lot of overseas orders, partly due to demand and partly due to advance stockpiling in quasi-anti-dumping regions. This puts pressure on the production side, leading to the phenomenon of "raising prices to block orders." Making signed orders wait for delivery can alleviate the situation of delivering low-priced orders with high-priced raw materials.