Market analysis of paraquat

Compared with glyphosate, paraquat TK’s price has been stable. Affected by the current decreasing domestic demand of glyphosate, the enquiry and turnover of paraquat TK are also decreasing and its price is showing a downward trend too. As the domestic spring pesticide market winds up periodically, the domestic paraquat market will soon enter a relatively quiet period. During this period, although orders of paraquat TK decrease, manufacturers always work overtime. It seems that although new orders are not that much, enterprises are still making efforts to finish previous orders. According to the market of pyridine, a main raw material of paraquat, since 1 April, 2014 the supply of pyridine has been more tense. Although some domestic enterprises recovered production after inspection in early April, the tense supply situation did not change; furthermore, the price of pyridine has been increasing slowly. At the same time, according to the recent export situation, the export orders of paraquat TK have become fewer. Under double pressures at home and abroad, how will price of paraquat TK change? It deserves our attention.
Another important point is that there is no more than one month left before China’s prohibition of paraquat AS production by 1 July, 2014. The prohibition of paraquat AS production will be harmful for the domestic paraquat market, making it a vacuum period for some time. What’s worse is that so far there has been no reports on new formulations of paraquat in the industry. Furthermore, due to the high access threshold of new formulations of paraquat like water soluble granule (SG) and water soluble gel (GW), enterprises have no much enthusiasm in researching new formulation products of paraquat.
Even if the industrialization of new formulations of paraquat is accomplished, problems of cost performance and popularization are still serious. Production costs of new formulations of paraquat, like SG and GW, are higher than that of paraquat AS, which means new formulations are in inferior position in cost performance. In addition, it takes some time to accomplish the industrialization of new formulations of paraquat and its market popularization. If producers do not hurry up to catch the opportunity of popularizing, it would make bad effect on the future domestic market of paraquat. Only by realizing new formulations of paraquat’s technology breakthrough, improving its cost performance and accelerating its popularization can the domestic paraquat revive.