Bulk supply · Solvents & Organic Chemicals
Toluene in MS drums for paints, inks, adhesives, rubber and pharmaceutical process use — CAS 108-88-3, IS 537 grade and industrial grade, supplied against the producing plant’s certificate of analysis for the lot.
Also searched as: toluene price, toluene price today, methylbenzene, toluol, nitration grade toluene
What we supply
Velora supplies toluene in bulk, in mild-steel drums, against the producing plant’s certificate of analysis for the lot, with the safety data sheet. Velora is a bulk supplier and trader, not a manufacturer. CAS 108-88-3; EC 203-625-9.
Toluene is not made for its own sake. It arrives as a co-product — from catalytic reformate in a refinery, from pyrolysis gasoline off a steam cracker, from coke-oven light oil, and as a by-product of styrene manufacture — and that matters to a buyer in two ways. It is why the impurity profile, and particularly the benzene content, varies by route rather than by brand. And it is why the price behaves the way it does: a refiner can always put toluene back into the gasoline pool instead of selling it to you.
India meets most of its toluene demand by import. 438,055 tonnes were imported in FY2018-19 — that is the figure Platts cited when it proposed moving its CFR India toluene assessment to a daily basis, and it is quoted here for that reason rather than as a current measure of the market. MRPL commissioned a 40,000 t/yr toluene unit in January 2025, naming pharmaceuticals, chemicals, paints and defence as its target markets. Indian toluene is otherwise recovered from refinery reformate and from cracker pygas. The practical consequence for a buyer is that the Indian price is an import-parity price, and the grade on offer often depends on which cargo is in tank.
The one number to read on the COA is benzene. Toluene is co-produced with benzene, so residual benzene is intrinsic to it, and benzene is a Category 1A carcinogen. IS 537:2011 caps benzene at 500 mg/kg (0.05%), and Reliance’s published toluene specification also reads benzene 500 wt ppm maximum — so 500 mg/kg is what the domestic market actually offers, not a stretch target. Producer specifications elsewhere are commonly written at 0.09 wt% (900 mg/kg), which sits just under a real regulatory threshold: under the US OSHA benzene standard (29 CFR 1910.1028) work where the only exposure is from liquid mixtures containing 0.1% or less benzene by volume is excluded, and above that the full standard applies — 1 ppm eight-hour PEL, 5 ppm fifteen-minute STEL, a 0.5 ppm action level, plus regulated areas, monitoring and medical surveillance. Note the bases differ: the OSHA trigger is by volume, while IS 537 and producer specifications are by mass. Some Indian spec sheets carry no benzene line at all; that is the first thing to ask for if a quotation does not show it, and it is why we quote against a stated benzene limit rather than promising one. Tell us the limit your process or your EHS programme needs and we will quote against a lot whose COA certifies it.
A grade name is not a specification — and “IS 537” alone is no longer specific enough either. IS 537 is a single-grade standard: one requirements table, no grades. There are now two live editions. IS 537:2011 (Second Revision) sets toluene 99.8% by mass minimum, benzene 500 mg/kg maximum, non-aromatic hydrocarbons 0.1% by mass maximum, Pt-Co colour 10 maximum, total sulphur 1 mg/kg maximum and water 500 mg/kg maximum. A Third Revision, IS 537:2025, has since been published and is the edition BIS now licenses the Standard Mark against; it revises some of those limits. We have not bought the 2025 text and publish no figure from it. So put the edition year on the purchase order — “IS 537 grade” on its own can now mean two different tables, and that is a contract problem, not a pedantic one.
“Nitration grade” is a separate American designation, ASTM D841; its numeric table is paywalled and we publish no figure from it. We have seen material offered in India as “Pure, Nitration Grade” at 98.8% minimum purity with non-aromatics up to 1.50% — an order of magnitude above the IS 537:2011 non-aromatics limit, under a grade name that sounds tighter. We cannot publish the spec sheet that came from, so treat it as a warning rather than as a market statistic. Reliance’s published specification sits between the two at non-aromatics 2000 wt ppm (0.2%) maximum and benzene 500 wt ppm maximum. And note the consequence: 98.8–99.5% industrial or solvent grade does not meet IS 537 at all, because the IS 537 floor is 99.8%. Specify the three numbers that matter — purity %, non-aromatics % and benzene mg/kg — and the edition of IS 537 you mean.
IS 537:2011 also sets appearance clear and free of sediment and haze, relative density 0.869–0.873 at 15.56/15.56 °C, distillation range 0.6 °C maximum, C8-and-heavier aromatics 1000 ppm maximum, and hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide absent. A COA should carry, at minimum: purity by GC, benzene, non-aromatics, colour on the Pt-Co (ASTM D1209) or Saybolt (ASTM D156) scale, acid wash colour (ASTM D848), distillation range (ASTM D850), density, total sulphur (ASTM D5453), copper strip corrosion (ASTM D849), water and acidity.
Grades & packing
These are the formats we most commonly supply. Other grades, packing sizes and pack marking are available — ask at the enquiry stage.
| Product | Formula | Grade | HSN | Packing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toluene | C₇H₈ | 99.8% min (IS 537) · 98.8–99.5% industrial | 2902 30 00 | MS drum 160–180 kg |
No tested values are published here. The certificate of analysis for the batch actually loaded travels with the despatch documents, and a representative COA and the safety data sheet go out before any commercial discussion.
Applications
The largest merchant market in India and the one a trader actually serves — automotive and architectural coatings, gravure and flexo inks, rubber cements and SR adhesives, polyurethane and contact adhesives, and thinner formulation. Paints were named explicitly among the target markets for MRPL’s new unit.
The largest single sink overall — somewhere in the 45–60% range depending on whose split you read — via toluene disproportionation, transalkylation with C9 aromatics and hydrodealkylation. This is the swing outlet: it runs only when the benzene–toluene and paraxylene–toluene spreads pay for it, which is the mechanism behind most of toluene’s price movement.
A high-specification segment — low benzene, tight Saybolt or Pt-Co colour, low sulphur, low water — and usually material that has been kept in stainless steel rather than reconditioned drums. Benzene is a Class 1 residual solvent under ICH Q3C with a limit far below any industrial specification; work to your own filing, not to ours.
Via dinitrotoluene and toluene diamine, for flexible polyurethane foam. Reported as the fastest-growing segment, though India has limited domestic TDI capacity, so much of that demand is captive or arrives as imported downstream product rather than as merchant toluene.
By partial oxidation of the methyl group.
Rubber processing, extraction and crystallisation solvent, and carbon black feed. Gasoline octane blending is toluene’s biggest alternative use, but in India it is internal to refiners and never reaches the merchant market — it matters to a buyer only because it sets the floor under the price.
Handling & storage
Worth reading before you order rather than after. If any of this is a problem at your site, tell us — it usually changes what we would quote.
Price
There is a published Indian reference price for toluene, which is unusual for the products on this site, and it is worth understanding because it is how your quotation is built. Platts assesses CFR India Toluene daily — since 3 August 2020, at 16:30 Singapore time — at minimum 99.5% purity, 2,000 MT cargoes, basis Kandla and Mumbai, 40–60 days forward, LC 90 days, in US dollars per tonne, alongside a daily cash differential quoted against the FOB Korea marker. So Indian import parity is formally structured as FOB Korea, plus the India differential, plus freight. Note that the CFR India assessment is written at 99.5% minimum while FOB Korea is 99.1% minimum: India’s import benchmark is the tighter grade, which is part of why it carries a differential. What then moves it: crude and naphtha set the floor, since toluene is a naphtha and reformate derivative; the benzene and xylene spreads set the ceiling, because toluene is priced off what benzene and xylene will pay for it, and when those spreads compress the disproportionation and hydrodealkylation units stop pulling toluene and the price falls — OPIS reported exactly that in early October 2025, with the benzene–toluene spread down about 5.7% month on month and Asian toluene at a three-month low; gasoline blending is the alternative outlet, and when blend value beats chemical value refiners keep toluene in the pool and merchant supply thins, which OPIS reported as a roughly 40% month-on-month fall in Korean toluene exports in August 2025; Chinese supply is the structural bear, with Chinese exports up about 20% month on month in the same month and a large tranche of new Chinese capacity due onstream during 2025; freight, parcel availability and tankage at Kandla and Mumbai sit inside the India differential; and the rupee matters, because cargoes are invoiced in dollars on LC 90 days while your purchase is in rupees, so an importer carries roughly three months of currency exposure per cargo. Indian seasonality is post-monsoon and festive-weighted, so solvent demand typically firms into the October–December quarter. Toluene has no listed futures contract; benzene on the Dalian Commodity Exchange and paraxylene on Zhengzhou are the nearest thing to a hedge. Assessments described here are the price agencies’ own — Platts for the CFR India benchmark, OPIS for the October 2025 observations — and we publish no assessment values. We quote landed, against your grade, benzene limit and packing, with the producer’s COA.
Questions
Numbers, not names — and the names are used loosely enough that you should never buy on them. IS 537 is a single-grade Indian specification, and there are now two live editions: IS 537:2011 (Second Revision) sets toluene 99.8% by mass minimum, benzene 500 mg/kg maximum, non-aromatic hydrocarbons 0.1% by mass maximum, Pt-Co colour 10 maximum, total sulphur 1 mg/kg maximum and water 500 mg/kg maximum, and a Third Revision, IS 537:2025, has since been published and revises some of those limits. We have not bought the 2025 text and publish no figure from it — but it is why you should write the edition year on the purchase order. “Nitration grade” is a separate American designation, ASTM D841; its numeric table is paywalled and we publish no figures from it. We have seen material offered in India as “Pure, Nitration Grade” at 98.8% minimum purity with non-aromatics up to 1.50%, an order of magnitude above the IS 537:2011 non-aromatics limit, under a grade name that sounds tighter. Reliance’s published specification sits between them at non-aromatics 2000 wt ppm maximum and benzene 500 wt ppm maximum. Note also that 98.8–99.5% industrial or solvent grade does not meet IS 537 at all, because the floor is 99.8%. Specify purity %, non-aromatics %, benzene mg/kg and the IS 537 edition.
Yes. UN 1294, TOLUENE, Class 3 flammable liquid, Packing Group II, under the UN Model Regulations and correspondingly under ADR/RID, IMDG and ICAO/IATA. Packing Group II, not III — that is a common error on Class 3 paperwork. Under CMVR 1989 rule 131 the consignor must use a vehicle validly registered to carry the goods, equip it, inform the transporter fully and ensure the driver is trained; rule 134 requires the emergency information panel to carry the consignor’s own name and telephone number alongside the emergency services number. Separately, toluene is Class A petroleum under the Petroleum Act 1934 because its flash point, 4 °C, is below 23 °C, and rule 75 of the Petroleum Rules 2002 requires a licence to move petroleum Class A in bulk by road.
Almost certainly, yes. Toluene is Class A petroleum under the Petroleum Act 1934 because its flash point is below 23 °C. Section 8(1) of that Act exempts from licence only petroleum Class A not intended for sale, and only up to thirty litres, and section 8(2) requires even that to be kept in securely stoppered glass or stoneware receptacles of not more than one litre or metal receptacles of not more than twenty-five litres. The larger exemptions in section 7 — 2,500 litres of Class B, 45,000 litres of Class C — name only those classes and do not extend to Class A, and the only bigger Class A allowance, in section 9, is confined to one hundred litres held as motive-power fuel for a registered vehicle or stationary engine. So a single drum is already above every exemption in the Act, and material held for sale is outside section 8 whatever the quantity. Take your own position with PESO under the Petroleum Rules 2002, and satisfy yourself about the licensing position of any supplier you buy from and of the transporter who brings it. The same flash-point test catches acetone, isopropyl alcohol and methanol.
No — and in fact it never was, which is a common misunderstanding. Toluene was brought under the Toluene (Quality Control) Order, 2021 (S.O. 5528(E) dated 24 December 2021), which would have made the BIS Standard Mark mandatory against IS 537. Its date of implementation was deferred several times, last by S.O. 5537(E) of 23 December 2024 to 22 December 2025, and the Order was then rescinded with effect from 28 November 2025 — before it ever came into operation. So there was never a period in which ISI marking was compulsory for toluene, and there are no legacy BIS licences for it to ask for. IS 537 remains the Indian specification and is still the right thing to buy against; it has simply never been compulsory. Confirm the current position against the gazette before relying on it for a shipment.
Viton (FKM) or PTFE. Toluene is unsuitable with nitrile, HNBR, EPDM, neoprene, natural rubber, butyl, silicone and polyurethane; it is good with Viton, with some swell, and very good with perfluoroelastomers such as Kalrez or Chemraz. The trap in India is that nitrile is the default O-ring and hose-liner material in drum pumps and transfer hardware and it fails in toluene, and that EPDM — the usual substitute when nitrile is unavailable — also fails. Most toluene transfer leaks are one of those two mistakes. Nitrile gloves are unsuitable for immersion or sustained contact for the same reason.
No. Polyethylene and polystyrene are both unsuitable, which rules out HDPE jerrycans and IBCs. Toluene goes into mild-steel drums and tanks; carbon steel is chemically correct because toluene as specified is dry and non-acidic and is not corrosive to iron. Stainless 304 or 316 is used where colour and iron pickup matter, typically for pharma and coatings buyers protecting Saybolt or Pt-Co colour — a quality point rather than a corrosion one. Toluene will also lift most conventional tank coatings, so use a solvent-resistant system or unlined carbon steel.
Yes, always. Toluene’s conductivity is about 5 pS/m, well below the 50 pS/m threshold at which a liquid is treated as a non-conductive static accumulator, and its flash point is 4 °C — so the headspace is flammable at Indian ambient temperature and the liquid generates and holds charge while it is being pumped. The Solvents Industry Association’s Guidance Note 47 gives a maximum resistance to earth of 10 ohms as a continuity check, fill velocity below 1 m/s until the inlet pipe is submerged and then up to 7 m/s, typically 2–3 m/s, and 1 m/s throughout if a water phase is present — tanker-bottom water is a real problem and sharply raises charge generation. These are general figures; design to your own hazardous-area classification. Bonding alone may not fully remove the hazard; API RP 2003 and NFPA 77 are the underlying standards.
No — and the position is worth stating precisely, because it is widely got wrong. Toluene is listed in Table II of the 1988 UN Convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs, alongside acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, diethyl ether, hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid. But India notified only 27 of that Convention’s 33 chemicals under the NDPS (Regulation of Controlled Substances) Order, 2013, and toluene is one of six left out — with acetone, ethyl ether, hydrochloric acid, piperidine and sulphuric acid. Because it is not notified there is no licence to hold. Indian exporters sometimes need written confirmation of that fact for an overseas counterparty, and under a Central Bureau of Narcotics public notice of August 2023 a company can request such a letter from CBN on minimal KYC documentation. This is separate from, and does not replace, the PESO petroleum licensing question above.
No. Velora supplies bulk only — drums — and does not supply retail packs, thinner tins or laboratory reagents. For toluene this is a firm policy rather than a minimum order: toluene is abused as an inhalant, correction-fluid and “whitener” abuse is a documented problem in India, and the small-pack trade is where diversion happens.
We do not publish prices, and a figure quoted today would be wrong by the end of the week. Unusually for an industrial chemical there is a public benchmark behind the quotation: Platts assesses CFR India Toluene daily at 99.5% minimum purity, 2,000 MT, basis Kandla and Mumbai, 40–60 days forward, LC 90 days, in US dollars per tonne, as a differential over the FOB Korea marker. Your landed rupee price is that, plus inland freight, adjusted for the grade and benzene limit you need and for packing, volume, credit terms and delivery point. It moves with crude and naphtha underneath and with the benzene and xylene spreads above — when those compress, disproportionation units stop buying toluene and the price falls — and with the rupee, since cargoes are invoiced in dollars on 90-day credit. Send the grade, benzene limit, quantity, packing and delivery location and we will quote landed against the producer’s COA.
No. Velora is a bulk supplier and trader, not a manufacturer. Toluene is not made for its own sake anywhere — it is a co-product, recovered from catalytic reformate in a refinery, from pyrolysis gasoline off a steam cracker, from coke-oven light oil, and as a by-product of styrene manufacture. We source from producers and supply against the producing plant’s certificate of analysis for each lot, with the safety data sheet and, on request, the TDS. If you need material from one named plant on every consignment, say so at enquiry stage — it is a real constraint on a co-product and it changes what we can commit to.
The HSN code for toluene is 2902 30 00 (Toluene). Heading 2902 is cyclic hydrocarbons and 2902.30 is toluene; India does not split it further, so the code is the same for every commercial grade — only the COA distinguishes them. The classification test that matters is purity and chemical definition, not where the material came from: Chapter 29 Note 1(a) admits separate chemically defined compounds “whether or not containing impurities”, so commercial toluene sits in Chapter 29 whether it was recovered from reformate, pyrolysis gasoline or coke-oven light oil, and Chapter 27 Note 1(a) expressly excludes chemically defined compounds. Crude toluene-rich fractions that are not chemically defined fall in Chapter 27, heading 2707, and specifically 2707.20, which by Chapter 27 Subheading Note 3 covers products containing more than 50% toluene by weight. Treat this as information, not tax advice. Source: the Indian customs tariff as listed in the GST HSN directory, checked September 2026.
Documentation
Shipped as a dangerous good under UN 1294. A TREM card travels on the vehicle.
| Document | What it covers for toluene | When you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Product specification | Download the product specification sheet for toluene (PDF) — CAS, formula, grade supplied against, packing, HSN and transport classification. Carries no test results and certifies no batch. | Download now |
| Safety data sheet (MSDS/SDS) | Download the 16-section GHS safety data sheet (PDF) — compiled from PubChem, the ECHA CLP inventory and ILO safety cards. The producer’s sheet for the lot supplied governs and is issued with the consignment. | Download now |
| Representative COA | A producer’s representative certificate of analysis for the grade you specify, obtained at enquiry stage so your QC can assess toluene against your own specification | Before commercial terms |
| Batch COA | Tested values for the batch actually loaded on your vehicle | With despatch documents |
| Technical data sheet | Handling, storage and materials-of-construction guidance | On request |
| TREM card | Transport emergency information for the driver, on the vehicle | With the consignment |
We do not publish blank certificates to download. A certificate of analysis belongs to a batch, so a generic one tells you nothing about the material on your vehicle — and the safety data sheet is the producer’s document for the grade actually quoted. Ask and both are emailed, usually the same working day.
Related lines
Sourcing desk
You will get a written offer for toluene with landed price, packing, lead time and a stated validity — not a price that changes on the phone.