Export volume of glyphosate technical and formulations go up in Jan. –Aug. 2016 in China

Tranalysis Guangzhou: The export volume of glyphosate technical reached 217,400 tonnes accumulatively in Jan.-Aug. 2016 in China, up 15.47% YoY. In August, the export volume of glyphosate technical was 28,500 tonnes, even up 85.88% YoY. As for glyphosate formulations, the export volume reached 357,100 tonnes in total, up 7.3% YoY. In August, the export volume of glyphosate formulations was 43,800 tonnes, up 92.11% YoY in a single month.  

Major export destinations of glyphosate in 2015 and Jan. – Aug. 2016 Unit: 10 thousand tonnes

Source: Tranalysis

Glyphosate in China mainly was exported to Australia, Brazil, the USA, Argentina and Thailand. Among them, Brazil, the USA, Argentina mainly purchased glyphosate technical while Australia and Thailand imported glyphosate formulations more.

Compared to that in 2015, the overseas demand for glyphosate recovered obviously in Jan.- Aug. 2016. It is predicted that the overseas demand for glyphosate would remain strong thanks to the traditional exporting peak season in Q4 2016 – Q1 2017.

As the major herbicide for genetically modified (GM) crops, glyphosate takes up half of the market share of herbicides for GM crops in the world. It is mainly applied in GM soybean, GM corn and GM cotton currently.

Due to the potential development of GM researches in the world, glyphosate enjoys a very prospect future. In addition, glyphosate is still irreplaceable now, thanks to its excellency in controlling weeds and the industry chain of glyphosate founded by some feed companies. For instance, Monsanto has developed a chain from glyphosate-resistant seeds to glyphosate, which makes glyphosate more irreplaceable and expensive to replace.

Glyphosate industry is trapped in overcapacity in China now and most of the small-scaled glyphosate enterprises have suspended their productions. The glyphosate price kept falling from RMB40,000/t in its peak in 2013 to RMB17,000/t in its bottom in H1 2016.

After the price downturn for such a long time, both the operation rate and inventory of glyphosate remained low and some small-scaled enterprises even shut down some of their production lines.

Based on Tranalysis researches on glyphosate quotations from major glyphosate producers, some of the producers began to increase their quotations since Sep. 2016. Glyphosate quotations for overseas market from Fuhua Tongda Agro-chemical Technology Co., Ltd. reached RMB20,000/t. It is expected that the glyphosate price would keep rebounding.

Regarding to cost, and supply and demand, Tranalysis believes that the adjustment on glyphosate prices is attributed to the following reasons: a. increase on cost: most of the upstream products of glyphosate increased in different extent; b. the approaching of traditional peak season: some overseas markets begin to purchase glyphosate from China and overseas market like South America entered its peak season for demand in Oct. c. low inventory and production suspension: the glyphosate inventory was quite low in China and some major producing provinces suspended productions for environmental inspection.   

It is expected that the glyphosate market would rebound in the near future.

About Tranalysis:

Tranalysis is an intelligence and analysis provider on import/export data covering agriculture, chemicals and life science industries in China. Tranalysis, founded in 2001, provides users not only large amount of import/export data in China, but also analysis to help monitor the market trends. Our clients include Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta, SinoChem and etc.

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