Chinese pesticide production has a distinct regional nature, mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong provinces. In 2013, the three provinces produced 1,954,800 tons of chemical pesticides, accounting for 61.27% of the country's total production. The following is a detailed description:
Market situation
Through the analysis, with the improvement of the level of China's agricultural modernization, the level of pesticide use in China's agricultural production has also increased with the promotion of the development of China's pesticide industry. In addition, due to the industrial transfer of the global pesticide industry, China has become the world's most important pesticide production base. In the past ten years, China's pesticide industry has developed rapidly. In 2015, the output of chemical pesticides in China was 3.74 million tons. From 2003 to 2015, the compound growth rate of chemical pesticides was 14.11%.
In the structure of China's chemical pesticide’s export, herbicides and insecticides are the main lines. In 2015, the export volume of herbicides, insecticides, and bactericides was 820,000 tons, 225,000 tons, and 83,000 tons respectively, and fungicides only accounted 7.06% for the total export volume and was a lot lower than the global pesticide market share(26%), still has a larger market space.
In 2016, the size of the global pesticide market was US$56.52 billion, which has a slight decrease of 1.76% compared to 2015, and the decreasing rate was significantly lower than 2015. The total agricultural pesticide sales accounted for 88% of the total pesticide market share, which was USD 49.985 billion, down by 2.39% year-on-year. Non-agricultural pesticides achieved total sales of USD 6.535 billion, up by 3.37% year-on-year. From 2003 to 2016, the annual compound annual growth rate of the global pesticide market was 4.7%, in which the compound growth rate of the agricultural pesticide market was 4.9%.
Development Status: Low-to-medium content is the main melody in the market, and the number of mixed SC formulations continue to increase
The quality of pesticide formulations is not based on the level of the content, but on the efficiency and cost. Around the year 2000, domestic companies were keen to develop high-content formulations. However, in the past 10 years, domestic companies have turned to the development of low-to-medium-content formulations in order to allow more space to coordinate product’s recipe to get excellent efficiency. These are especially concentrated on the development of new type formulations such as SC, OD, SD, WG, EW, ME, etc. and become a new trend in the development of pesticide formulation technology.
The number of new pesticides directly processed into SC has increased. Affected by policies, EC has been subject to various restrictions, so there are more products turning to develop new environment-friendly formulations. This has also been fully reflected in 2015 that SC formulation became the first choice for new registrations.
Severe abuse of pesticides forced the introduction of new industrial policies:
Over the years, the use of pesticides in China has been rising following with the increase of the plantation area of crops and the difficulty in the prevention and control of pests and diseases. According to statistics, the annual average consumption qty of pesticides for agricultural use in 2012-2014 was 311,000 tons (100%) which increased 9.2% from 2009-2011. However, at present, the average utilization rate of pesticides in China is only 35%. Most of the pesticides are lost through runoff, leakage, and drift, contaminating the soil and water environment and affecting the ecological environment safety of farmland. Currently, 70.6% of farmland in China is polluted to varying degrees. In the structure of pesticide products in China, there are still many highly toxic and high-residue varieties. Although the state has gradually banned the use of some highly toxic pesticides, some small and medium-sized manufacturers still illegally produce related products, resulting in crop phytotoxicity and pesticide poisoning. To control this, the state has successively introduced a series of industrial policies, such as the control of chemical pesticides’ use, the phase-out of high-toxicity&high-residue pesticides, and the encouragement of pesticide companies to acquire mergers and acquisitions. These policies have promoted the development of large and advantageous pesticide companies’ fast and healthy development.
Rapid increase in the types and quality of pesticide products but insufficient innovation capacity
After many years of continuous and steady development, the pesticide industry in China has formed a pesticide industrial system including the production of TC, formulations, R&D, and the matching of raw material intermediates. The variety of pesticides has become increasingly diverse. At the same time, in order to integrate into the industrial chain of the global pesticide industry, the quality of pesticides in China has rapidly increased. More than 200 countries or industry standards that are currently enforced have adopted or are equivalent to the international standards of FAO or WTO.
Industry concentration is low
At present, China has become the world's largest pesticide producer, but its industry concentration is relatively low. There are more than 2,000 domestic pesticide industry companies, of which 85% are in the industry with annual sales of less than 2,000 tons. Big industry, small business.
China's pesticide production has a distinct regional nature, mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong. The chemical industry in the region is relatively developed and the industrial agglomeration effect is obvious, which provides a powerful guarantee for the scale expansion of the pesticide industry in China and the consolidation and upgrading of industries.
The above is a detailed introduction to the current status of pesticide development. We believe that in the near future, the current status of pesticide development will be a blue ocean becoming better and better.