Wanhua Chemical Is Fighting Counterfeits While Raising Prices

On April 7, Wanhua Chemical issued a notice reminding customers to guard against fake websites and fraud.

That notice is actually worth paying attention to, because the market has indeed become messy lately. In the notice, Wanhua said that unauthorized individuals had recently built fake or forged versions of the company’s website, using Wanhua’s name to publish false information, conduct business negotiations, and collect payments. This would already be troublesome under normal conditions. At a moment like this, it becomes even more dangerous.

Over the past month or so, the chemical market has hardly been calm. Once Middle East tensions escalated, raw materials, logistics, and supply expectations all started shifting. Many products were almost moving in a pattern of prices rising while quotations were being revised at the same time, and company notices kept coming one after another. Once the market enters this kind of high-volatility state, the problem is no longer just “buying at a higher price,” but “contacting the wrong party, sending money to the wrong account, or using the wrong channel.”

Wanhua Chemical happens to be right at the center of this kind of market attention.

From April 1, Wanhua Chemical’s Hungarian subsidiary BorsodChem raised prices for all MDI products by 500 euros per ton. By April 7, Wanhua’s East China acrylic acid quotation had already reached 12,550 yuan per ton. If compared only with March 23, it looks like just another 200 yuan increase. But compared with March 3, when East China acrylic acid was quoted at 7,050 yuan per ton, it means the product had risen by 5,500 yuan in just one month. Acrylic acid moving like that is enough by itself to put the whole market on edge.

Even earlier, Wanhua had already been sending out warning signals. On March 7, the company issued a force majeure notice covering all products for Middle Eastern countries. By March 10, prices for multiple products had already moved sharply higher: propylene was up 2,860 yuan per ton, butadiene up 5,700 yuan, MTBE up 2,550 yuan, TBA up 2,700 yuan, styrene up 4,900 to 5,000 yuan, n-butanol up 2,600 to 2,700 yuan, NPG up 1,300 yuan, maleic anhydride up 2,900 to 3,100 yuan, AA up 4,300 to 4,400 yuan, BA up 3,150 to 3,250 yuan, MA up 1,400 yuan, MAA up 4,700 yuan, and polyethylene and PVC series products were also rising.

Put together, these numbers no longer describe small adjustments in single products. They show an entire chain being pushed upward. And the more the market behaves like this, the easier it is for customers to become anxious. They want to confirm prices quickly, lock in cargo quickly, make payment quickly, and find the right contact quickly. And it is exactly at moments like this that fake websites, fake email addresses, and fake contacts are most likely to slip in.

That is why Wanhua’s anti-fraud notice is not just an optional reminder. It is a very practical message: do not rush — confirm everything clearly before sending payment.

Because the problem now is not only that prices are moving fast, but that information is becoming chaotic at the same time. Quotations are changing, channels are changing, and the pace is changing. Many customers are mainly worried about whether they can still secure material, and for that reason they may actually lower their guard. But the more this happens, the less anyone can afford to skip the steps of confirming the official website, confirming the email address, confirming the payment account, and confirming the contact person. If something goes wrong, the loss is often not just a few hundred or a few thousand yuan in price difference. It can mean losing the entire payment outright.

In the end, these two recent developments around Wanhua are really just two sides of the same situation.

On one side, the market is genuinely rising, and rising fast. On the other side, once the market becomes chaotic, fake information circulating around a major company also becomes more common. The first explains why everyone is in such a hurry. The second explains why that hurry can lead to problems.

Seen this way, the meaning of the notice is actually very clear. Wanhua Chemical really is raising prices, really is revising quotations, and really is dealing with supply and cost changes brought on by Middle East tensions. But precisely because of that, it becomes even more important to confirm information through formal channels. The messier the market gets, the less anyone can afford to move too fast.

For customers, watching prices matters, of course. But at a time like this, something matters even more: not getting fooled by a fake “Wanhua Chemical.”