Bitumen Price Today: International Bitumen Price List 2026

FOB and CIF quotations for penetration bitumen, oxidized bitumen, cutback and emulsion, loading from Jebel Ali, Mersin and Iskenderun. Built for traders, importers, distributors and contractors who need a firm offer, container-loading figures and export documentation in one place.

Where you land inside each band depends on quantity, destination port and payment terms, which is what the written offer confirms. Prices are reviewed weekly and re-issued when the market moves enough to matter.

Today’s bitumen price list — all export grades

Every grade below is in current production and available for export. We issue prices as written offers rather than publishing numbers that would be stale within days — but the specification, packing and loading detail you need to compare offers is all here.

All figures are USD per metric ton, FOB, packed cargo. The ± tolerance is our working band for the week. Oxidized bitumen is quoted in 25 kg meltable bags and the level shown is indicative across grades 85/25, 90/15 and 115/15, with harder grades confirming toward the upper end. Cutback and emulsion are quoted per enquiry because solvent and water content make a single published figure misleading.

Bulk bitumen price by origin

Bulk cargo prices sit on a different basis: these are FOB levels by loading origin, for heated tanker or bitutainer discharge. Read them as origin benchmarks rather than as a direct comparison with the packed prices above — a bulk figure from one region can sit higher than a drummed price from another, because origin, freight and refinery economics all differ. On bulk the binding constraint is usually the loading slot rather than the dollar figure, so confirm vessel availability before fixing a price.

How to read the ± tolerance. The figure is our working level for the week and the band is real, not padding. Where you land inside it comes down to quantity, destination port, payment terms and how tight the loading window is. Ten containers with a flexible shipment month price at the bottom of the band; a single container with a fixed loading week prices at the top. Every offer we issue names one exact figure and a validity date.

Looking for a grade not listed? We also supply the full penetration range, VG grades, PG grades, polymer modified bitumen, Australian C-grades and bitumen roll sheet. For an indicative CFR price delivered to your own port, see our bitumen price by country guide, covering more than forty destination markets with the grade, conformity certificate and discharge port for each.

How bitumen prices are calculated

An export price is built from five stacked components: the vacuum residue feedstock (55–70% of an FOB drummed price), packing (14–22%), inland haulage to the loading port (4–9%), terminal handling and documentation (3–7%), and margin plus trade finance (3–6%). Ocean freight and marine insurance then sit on top of the FOB figure to produce a CFR or CIF price.

Bitumen is the heavy residue left at the bottom of the barrel after vacuum distillation, so its cost tracks crude oil — usually Brent, as published daily by the U.S. Energy Information Administration — but with a lag of two to six weeks and never at a one-to-one ratio. A rule of thumb used across the trade is that a USD 10 per barrel move in Brent works through to roughly a 15–25% change in the bitumen price per ton, though the pass-through is softened by refinery hedging and existing drum stock.

The part most buyers miss is that refineries have a choice about what to do with that residue. When high-sulphur fuel oil cracks are strong, vacuum residue is worth more as bunker blendstock than as paving binder. Supply to the bitumen market tightens, and export offers firm up even on a flat crude day. If you are trying to time a purchase, watch the HSFO crack alongside Brent rather than Brent alone.

Cost stack of a typical FOB drummed price

Packing, drum weights and container loading

The single most common costing error we see from new importers is comparing a drummed FOB price against a bulk FOB price as though they were the same product. They are not. Here is the loading arithmetic you need to compare offers properly.

Quick figures. A 20′ FCL holds 80 steel drums. With 150 kg net drums that is 12 MT per container; with 180 kg net drums it is 14.4 MT. One-ton jumbo bags load 20 MT per 20′. A bitutainer or flexitank carries 20–24 MT. To convert a per-ton price to a per-drum price, multiply by the drum net weight and divide by 1,000.

Why drummed cargo costs more per ton

Look at this week’s numbers and the drum premium seems trivial: USD 575 drummed against USD 570 in jumbo bags for Bitumen 60/70, a USD 5 spread. That headline is misleading, because the real cost is in the container. Twelve tons of drummed cargo and twenty tons of jumbo-bag cargo occupy the same 20′ box and attract the same ocean freight. If freight to your port is USD 1,800 per container, that is USD 150 per ton on drums against USD 90 per ton on jumbo bags — a USD 60 difference in landed cost, twelve times the USD 5 you see on the FOB line. This is the single most useful piece of arithmetic on this page.

A new steel drum is a manufactured good in its own right. Every ton of drummed bitumen carries roughly six to seven drums, plus liners, pallets, strapping and the labour to fill and stuff them. When international steel prices move, drummed bitumen prices move with them independently of crude. Drums also cost you volume: 12 MT in a container that could have carried 20 MT in jumbo bags means you pay ocean freight on air.

The trade-off is flexibility. Drums need no heated facility at destination, they store for long periods, they survive rough inland transport, and they can be sold on in small lots. For a first trial order, or for a market where you are reselling to small contractors, drums are usually still the right answer even at the higher per-ton cost. For a road programme with its own tank farm, bulk or bitutainer will land materially cheaper.

Converting between price units

• Per ton to per drum: price/MT × drum net weight (kg) ÷ 1,000. A quote of USD 575/MT on 150 kg drums is USD 86.25 per drum.
• Per ton to per container: price/MT × net cargo per container. USD 575/MT on 150 kg drums is USD 6,900 per 20′ FCL, before freight.
• Comparing drum against bulk: always add the freight difference. Two containers of drums (24 MT) against one flexitank (24 MT) is a very different freight bill for the same tonnage.
• Short tons and barrels: 1 metric ton = 1.1023 short tons. Some North American indices quote per short ton, which makes them look cheaper than they are by about 10%.

FOB, CFR or CIF — which price are you comparing?

We quote on three bases. FOB covers the cargo loaded on board at the origin port; you arrange and pay ocean freight and insurance. CFR adds ocean freight to our account. CIF adds freight plus marine insurance. Import duty and customs clearance at destination are always yours. Two quotations are only comparable when the Incoterm and the named port match exactly.

This sounds obvious and it still costs importers money every month. A FOB quotation from one supplier and a CIF quotation from another are not a like-for-like comparison, and on long routes the freight component can be 15–25% of the landed cost. If you are running a tender, specify one Incoterm and one destination port for every bidder. The definitions follow the ICC Incoterms® 2020 rules.

Loading ports we quote from

We load from Jebel Ali (UAE) and Iskenderun and Mersin (Turkey). Origin affects more than freight distance: it determines the certificate of origin you receive, which in turn affects duty treatment and, in some markets, whether the cargo is acceptable at all. If your buyer or lender has origin restrictions, tell us before we quote — it changes which terminal we price from. Our regional coverage is set out by market on our bitumen supplier by country page.

Payment terms and export documentation

Payment terms are part of the price. Somebody has to finance the gap between refinery payment and your funds arriving, and that cost is priced in.

• 50% TT advance, balance against documents

  Our standard structure. Fifty per cent by telegraphic transfer at order confirmation, with the balance settled against a copy of the bill of lading and the certificate of analysis. The balance falls due only once the cargo is on the water and documented, so you are not paying in full against an undelivered shipment.

• 100% TT advance

  Full payment before loading. The cheapest option for the buyer because it carries no finance cost for us, and it prices at the bottom of the working band. Worth asking about if you want the sharpest number and have the working capital available.

We do not work on letters of credit. It is worth saying plainly rather than letting an enquiry run for a week before it surfaces. LC terms add bank charges, document discrepancy risk and a discounting period, and the cost of all three ends up in the per-ton figure. Our terms are TT-based, which is why the numbers on this page are what they are.

Documents issued with every shipment

Documentation that clears customs without argument is worth as much as a few dollars a ton to an importer. A standard set includes:

• Commercial invoice and packing list — matched to the contract wording exactly.
• Bill of lading — with on-board notation where your bank or customs authority requires it.
• Certificate of origin — chamber-attested, from the loading country.
• Certificate of analysis — batch-specific, against the agreed standard such as ASTM D946 for penetration grades.
• Certificate of quantity and weight — from the terminal or an independent surveyor.
• Third-party inspection report — SGS, Intertek or Geo-Chem, at loading, on request.
• Material safety data sheet — see our oxidized bitumen MSDS.

How to request a quotation that comes back firm

1. State the grade and standard. “Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946” is unambiguous. “Road bitumen” is not, and will cost you a round of emails.
2. State the packing. Drum (and net weight), jumbo bag, bitutainer, flexitank or bulk. This alone can shift the price by more than 20%.
3. State the quantity. In metric tons or number of containers. Tell us if this is a trial with repeat volume behind it, because it affects what we can commit.
4. Name the Incoterm and port. “CIF Dar es Salaam”, not “delivered price”. We quote FOB, CFR and CIF — name which one, and the exact port.
5. State the shipment window. The month you need to load in. A flexible window prices better than a fixed loading week, because it lets us match your cargo to a production run.

Bitumen prices grade by grade

Each family prices on its own logic. Knowing which one you are buying tells you what to expect before you even ask for a number.

Bitumen 60/70 price

Bitumen 60/70 is the benchmark export grade and the one meant when the trade refers to the bitumen price per ton without qualifying it. It is quoted most often as FOB, in new steel drums, from a Gulf or Turkish terminal, in USD per metric ton. Because it is the most traded grade it is also the most competitive, and the grade where the drum-versus-bulk spread is widest.

With a penetration of 60 to 70 dmm at 25 °C, this grade suits hot-mix asphalt in hot and temperate climates. It dominates road programmes from West Africa through South and South-East Asia, which is why demand for it is the clearest signal of paving-season activity in any region.

For traders, 60/70 is the grade where origin arbitrage is most visible. The same specification loading from two different terminals in the same week can differ by USD 40–80 per ton once freight to a given destination is included. If you are buying for resale rather than for a specific project, ask us to quote from both origins and compare landed cost, not FOB.

Specification and datasheet: Bitumen 60/70 · Standard: ASTM D946-09

Bitumen 80/100 price

Bitumen 80/100 is softer than 60/70, with penetration between 80 and 100 dmm. Quotations usually land within a narrow band of 60/70 because the refinery cost is similar, but availability — not economics — is what actually moves the price.

Fewer refineries run 80/100 continuously, so it is produced in campaigns. An enquiry that lands between campaigns gets a price reflecting waiting time or blending, not raw material cost. Buyers with a flexible shipment window can often close that gap simply by aligning with a production run, which is worth asking about explicitly when you enquire.

The grade suits cooler climates and applications where flexibility matters more than rut resistance, and it is also the standard feedstock for producing bitumen emulsion and cutback bitumen. If you are buying to blend locally rather than to pave, this is usually the grade to price.

Specification: Bitumen 80/100 · Also see Bitumen 40/50 for hotter climates

Oxidized bitumen price

Oxidized bitumen (blown bitumen) is made by blowing air through hot penetration bitumen in a reactor. It carries a consistent premium over penetration grades because blowing costs energy, reactor time and yield. The premium widens as the grade gets harder: 115/15 requires substantially more blowing than 85/25 and prices accordingly.

Grade names give the softening point in degrees Celsius followed by the penetration in dmm, so 85/25 softens at about 85 °C with a penetration around 25. Packing is the second cost factor: most oxidized bitumen ships in 25 kg meltable bags designed to go into the melter whole, and those bags plus palletising add more per ton than a steel drum does. Buyers able to accept 180 kg drums often save on that line.

For traders, the important commercial difference is demand character. Oxidized bitumen goes into roofing membrane and roll sheet, pipe coating, sealants, adhesives and insulating compounds — not roads. It therefore follows construction and manufacturing cycles rather than paving seasons, and holds value better through the monsoon months when penetration grades soften. If your portfolio is weighted entirely to paving grades, oxidized grades are a genuine counter-seasonal hedge.

Specifications: 85/25 · 90/15 · 115/15 · 150/5 · What is oxidized bitumen?

Cutback bitumen price

Cutback bitumen is penetration bitumen thinned with a petroleum solvent so it can be sprayed or mixed cold. Pricing it means pricing two commodities: typically a fifth to a third of the product by volume is solvent, and solvent tracks the light end of the barrel — kerosene and gasoil — not the heavy end.

Those two ends of the barrel do not always move together. In a winter with strong heating demand, kerosene can rally while bitumen is flat, and MC30 becomes more expensive than the bitumen market alone would suggest. MC30 carries more solvent than MC70, so it is the more solvent-exposed of the pair. This is the one family where it genuinely pays to check the light-distillate market before fixing your price.

Freight is the second consideration: you are shipping solvent as well as binder, so the cost per ton of actual bitumen delivered is higher than the headline. Cutback also has a flash point, which governs stowage and in some cases classifies the cargo as dangerous goods — check this with your forwarder before booking, because it affects both freight cost and which lines will carry it. For projects within reach of a blending facility, importing penetration grade and cutting back locally is sometimes cheaper, and we will say so when the numbers point that way.

Curing families: medium curing (MC) · rapid curing (RC) · slow curing (SC)

Bitumen emulsion price

Bitumen emulsion suspends bitumen droplets in water with an emulsifier so it can be applied cold without solvent. It is typically 40–45% water by weight, which means on a delivered basis you pay ocean freight on that water — the cost per ton of actual binder landed is far higher than a headline comparison with penetration bitumen suggests.

SS-1 is a slow-setting anionic emulsion under ASTM D977, used for prime coats, fog seals and soil stabilisation. CRS-1 is a rapid-setting cationic emulsion under ASTM D2397, used for tack coats and chip seals where a fast break is needed. The cationic and anionic families are not interchangeable — they behave differently against different aggregate chemistries.

Emulsion also has a real shelf life, commonly a few weeks to a few months depending on grade, storage temperature and agitation, and it can break or settle irreversibly if it freezes or cooks inside a container on a long voyage. For that reason our honest advice to buyers more than a short voyage away is to check whether local emulsion production exists first. Where a project genuinely needs imported emulsion we supply the full range, but we would rather tell you the economics are marginal than sell you freight on water.

Background: What is bitumen emulsion? · Use in prime and tack coats

Bitumen market overview 2026

Four forces set the tone in any given week, and the interesting weeks are the ones where two of them pull against each other.

• Brent crude

  Sets the feedstock floor. Pass-through is real but slow — two to six weeks — and partial. Track the EIA daily Brent series alongside the high-sulphur fuel oil crack, because when fuel oil pays better refiners divert residue away from bitumen and availability tightens regardless of crude direction.

• Ocean freight

  Decides whether an attractive FOB number survives the voyage. Red Sea routing decisions, Gulf equipment availability and peak-season surcharges have moved East Africa and South Asia landed costs by double-digit percentages inside a single quarter. For bulk, the constraint is the small world fleet of heated bitumen tankers, so parcel timing matters more than the day rate.

• Regional demand

  Demand is seasonal and hemispheric. Northern paving programmes lift buying through spring and summer; the South and South-East Asian monsoon shuts sites down from roughly June to September; Gulf and African importers stock ahead of their own dry seasons. Public infrastructure budgets and election cycles layer on top, so demand arrives in waves.

• Supply chain

  Refinery turnarounds, drum-plant capacity, steel prices, port congestion and payment routing decide whether a good price can actually be executed. In a tight month the binding constraint is rarely the dollar figure — it is whether anyone can confirm a loading slot inside your shipment window.

What this means for your buying strategy

• Do not buy exclusively on spot. Projects that source only on spot tend to buy at seasonal highs. Map your consumption phases at the start of the year and position orders 60–90 days ahead of each phase.
• Emergency procurement is the most expensive bitumen you will ever buy. When a project runs behind and you need cargo in ten days, you pay spot, expedited freight and premium drum availability all at once.
• Watch your own currency, not just USD. Bitumen is denominated in dollars globally. For importers in Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria or Ghana, local-currency cost can spike badly even when the USD price is flat. Currency hedging is a legitimate part of bitumen procurement.
• Fix the Incoterm before you compare. The cheapest FOB offer is frequently not the cheapest landed cost.
• Buy grade, not just price. An off-spec cargo that fails a destination lab test costs more than any discount you negotiated. Insist on a batch-specific certificate of analysis and consider third-party inspection at loading.

Factors affecting bitumen prices

Six variables account for nearly all of the difference between two quotations for the same grade. If you know where you sit on each, you can predict roughly where your number lands before you ask.

• 1. Feedstock cost

  Brent sets direction; the HSFO crack decides how much vacuum residue reaches the bitumen market at all. Two to six weeks of lag is normal.

• 2. Packing

  The largest controllable line. Drums add steel, liners, pallets and labour per ton and cost you container volume. Bulk removes all of it but needs heated handling at both ends.

• 3. Freight and Incoterm

  Routing, equipment availability, congestion and surcharges to your specific port. In some quarters this moves landed cost more than crude does.

• 4. Order quantity

  Documentation, inspection and terminal handling are largely fixed per shipment. Across one container they weigh heavily per ton; across ten, much less.

• 5. Grade and processing

  Straight-run penetration grades sit at the bottom. Oxidized adds reactor time, cutback adds solvent, emulsion adds water and emulsifier, PMB adds polymer. Each adds its own market exposure.

• 6. Terms and timing

  A larger advance prices better because less working capital sits in the deal. Peak-season enquiries compete for loading slots. And every offer has a validity window.

Why choose ZUMRUT International Kimya?

We have supplied bitumen and petroleum products since 2011, and the company was built around one idea: buyers deserve a supplier who knows the product, not just the price list. That shapes how we quote. If a grade is wrong for your climate, or emulsion makes no economic sense over your distance, we say so before we send a number.

Our supply position is not purely trading. We hold ownership in a gilsonite mine and a bitumen refinery, and shareholding positions in paraffin wax and petroleum jelly production facilities. Having a stake in what gets produced means we can speak to availability and consistency directly, rather than passing on whatever a broker chain hands us.

Most of our clients are industrial and trading buyers — road contractors, construction material importers, distributors, drilling companies, ink and paint manufacturers. What they need is reliable volume, consistent specification and documentation that clears customs without drama. We are not the right fit for everyone: if you want spot quantities with no technical follow-up, there are faster options. But if you source regularly and want a supplier who holds grade, meets schedules and answers when something needs sorting, that is where we work well.

• Two operating offices — Dubai (export hub, Business Bay) and Ankara (regional coordination and logistics).
• Full grade range from one desk — penetration, oxidized, cutback, emulsion, VG, PG, PMB, membrane, gilsonite and drilling materials.
• Two loading origins — Jebel Ali and Iskenderun/Mersin, so origin can be matched to your duty treatment and lender requirements.
• Third-party inspection on request — SGS, Intertek or Geo-Chem at loading, with certificate of analysis and certificate of origin.
• Written, dated offers — every quotation states grade, packing, quantity, Incoterm, loading window and validity period. No verbal indications.

Frequently asked questions