Phosphorus Industry China Monthly Report

In the past decade, China has preliminarily shaped the phosphorus industry with its own characteristics but compared to the large phosphorus industries overseas, there is still a gap. In this issue, CCM reviewed the ten-year development history of phosphorus industry.

China’s phosphate fertilizer industry is facing a great difficulty to reinvigorate the low-concentrated phosphate fertilizers. However, the problems of comprehensive utilization of resources and the environmental pressure along with the development of high-concentrated phosphate fertilizers underline the advantages of low-concentrated phosphate fertilizers. Hence the related government departments are reviewing and reconsidering the growth direction for China’s phosphate fertilizer industry. In the years ahead, the Chinese government will put restraining disordered mining into the plan thus the output growth rate of China’s phosphorus ore will gradually slow down. 
Meantime, in July 2014, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China releases the Emission Standards of Pollutants for Inorganic Phosphorus Industry, which sets up an uniform discharge standard for China’s wastewater and exhaust gas of inorganic phosphorus industry and provides legal basis for emission standards of phosphorus enterprises.

For company dynamics, in July, the NATESC announced that the water-soluble fertilizer of Kingenta was included in the national demonstration and extension plan, Hubei Forbon is trying to extract phosphate from the industrial wastewater of ammonium phosphate factoriesand Guiyang Sinochem-Kailin’s sales data shows that it gets good economic benefits depending on its energy saving and efficiency enhancing. Additionally, CCM also noticed that the nitrocompound fertilizer project of Kingenta Norsterra with a capacity of 600,000 t/a was put into production, aiming at expanding the demand for nitrocompound fertilizer. 
For prices, China’s MAP market is expected to get better due to the low operating rates. The sulfur price also raised a little bit lie in the pressure on sulfur inventory and the continuous demand for downstream phosphorus fertilizers. In July, most of phosphorus products prices witness decreases, which shows that in the short time, China’s phosphorus industry will keep in downturn.

At last, CCM looked at the export situation of China’s phosphorus industry in May 2014. Except for increased exports of food-grade phosphoric acid, other products like phosphorus, yellow phosphorus and MAP saw some decreases. Due to the increasing demand for phosphorus products in India in summer, export situation will be improved.

The RMB/USD exchange rate in this issue is USD1.00=RMB6.1523 on 1 July, 2014, sourced from the People's Bank of China. All the prices mentioned in this newsletter include the VAT unless otherwise specified. If there is any specific topic you would like us to cover or any subjects you would like us to investigate.