With rapid development in recent years, China has become the largest PF producer in the world, as well as the world's biggest PF consumer. Its PF production capacity has reached 442,000/t in 2010, up over 10% than that in the end of 2009. And both China's capacity and consumption of PF are estimated to take up over 50% of the global total currently. However, both the output and consumption of PF grew much slower than in 2007~2008 due to the downturn of downstream industries and financial crisis.
The report mainly focuses on the following problems:
- The production situation of PF in China: including major producers, development trend of production technology, pricing of PF in recent years and etc.
- Changes in China's import and export of PF in recent years.
- Consumption structure of PF in China in recent years.
- Factors influencing the development of PF.
Chinese PF industry is greatly influenced by development of its downstream industries, especially glyphosate in herbicide. At present, there are 2 major production pathways in glyphosate production , namely AEA pathway and IDA pathway. Using PF as raw material is only suitable for AEA pathway.
Affected by global financial crisis, the demand for glyphosate has kept slumping since the latter half of 2008, as well as the price of glyphosate. Further more, owing to environmental problems, AEA pathway in the production of glyphosate is facing increasingly intense competition from IDA pathway. Meanwhile, China's PF industry has seen signs of overcapacity in recent years. How these factors will influence PF development in China in the future?