Industry Group Standard for Ethyl Silicone Oil Expected by Late 2026

China's ethyl silicone oil industry, which has operated without dedicated product standards for years, is approaching a significant milestone. The National Technical Committee for Plastics Standardization is developing the first industry group standard specifically for ethyl silicone oil, with a draft expected to be circulated for comment by the end of 2026.

The current regulatory vacuum has created challenges across the value chain. Producers lack unified benchmarks for quality claims; downstream customers struggle to compare products from different suppliers; and export-oriented manufacturers face difficulties in technical negotiations with international buyers requiring recognized standards.

The proposed standard is expected to cover:

• Physical properties: viscosity, refractive index, flash point, specific gravity

• Chemical specifications: volatile content, acid value, heavy metal limits

• Impurity controls: D4 and D5 cyclic siloxane content, aligning with cosmetic regulatory requirements

The standard-setting process must balance competing priorities. The thresholds must be achievable for established producers with conventional technology, yet stringent enough to incentivize quality improvement and exclude substandard operators from the market.

Industry observers view this standardization effort as a marker of industry maturation. Once implemented, the group standard—and its potential evolution into a national standard—could accelerate market consolidation, facilitate export growth, and expand downstream adoption by providing engineers with reliable material specifications. For China's ethyl silicone oil industry, 2026 may be remembered not only as a year of capacity expansion, but as the year the industry gained its "rulebook."