About this site

Methanol sits in an unusual gap. It is one of the largest-volume commodity chemicals in the world and simultaneously the leading candidate to decarbonise deep-sea shipping, and yet a UK buyer trying to answer an ordinary question about it has very little to work with.

Real market intelligence sits behind subscriptions costing thousands a year. Almost everything freely available is a distributor's product page — useful for a phone number, useless for judging whether the quote in front of you is reasonable. What exists in between tends to be either a chemistry lesson or an American article about a market that prices differently to ours.

The Methanol Register exists to fill that gap. It is written for the person in a UK industrial company who has been told to sort out the methanol supply and would like a straight answer.

Independence

• We do not sell methanol. Not directly, not as a broker, not as an agent.
• We take no commission on any transaction arising from this site.
• No listing is paid for. Directory entries are not advertising and cannot be bought.
• We do not rank or endorse suppliers. The directory is orientation for your own enquiry.
• Every price carries its date and source, so you can judge how stale it is.

What we are not

This is not a price reporting agency. If you are trading at a scale where being wrong about the market is expensive, you need assessed transaction prices from a subscription service, and this site is not a substitute for one. Nor is anything here safety, legal or engineering advice — regulatory content is summarised so that you know which questions to ask, not so that you can skip asking a competent adviser.

Sourcing and accuracy

Technical and regulatory content is written against primary sources rather than secondary summaries. Where a figure appears, its source and date appear with it. The main references behind the current content:

• IMPCA Methanol Reference Specification v10, October 2024 — purity and impurity limits.
• HSE EH40/2005 Workplace exposure limits — occupational exposure figures.
• GB CLP mandatory classification list and supplier safety data sheets — hazard classification and physical properties.
• Poisons Act 1972 Schedule 1A and GB REACH Annex XVII — supply restrictions.
• Methanex published price sheets — posted contract prices and reference prices.
• Chemical Market Analytics by OPIS — global demand and derivative structure.

How current is this?

Pricing pages are reviewed at each producer posted-price reset — quarterly for Europe, monthly elsewhere. Regulatory pages are reviewed when the underlying legislation or guidance changes. Every page states the source and date of any figure it carries, so you can judge for yourself rather than trusting a “last updated” stamp that may only reflect a typo fix.

Methanol is volatile. The European posted contract price moved by €315 per tonne in a single quarterly reset in 2026. Treat any price figure older than one reset cycle as historical.