Today I had a request for 240lt of Glyphosate to be ordered and delivered onto farm.
In 2021 a 20 lt drum of 360 gram material could be purchased for £39.00, shortly thereafter availability diminished and the price skyrocketed. Today although, not quite back at its low point the price is more palatable. So what of the future? Reading a recent report from the Deputy General Manager of Fuhua Tongda, one of the biggest glyphosate producer globally the following was stated.
Fuhua Chemical is an export-oriented enterprise, ranking 4th on China’s 2021 pesticide exporter list. We do not see a fall in the demand for glyphosate as it is the world’s largest herbicide variety, for which demand is great; second, glyphosate is correlated to the GM crop planting area, which is currently relatively stable; moreover, China is the only source of glyphosate supply besides Bayer and from this perspective, substitution for glyphosate by supply from other countries is quite limited.
Glyphosate is an important variety of Fuhua Chemical. The raw material cost rise squeezes the profit margin of the product. From the perspective of minerals, we own phosphate ore and salt mines, which are the basic raw materials necessary for glyphosate production. This year, we are moving forward from phosphate ore to the downstream yellow phosphorus, which, upon completion, will bring us through the whole industrial chain. In the future, our dependence on external supply of raw materials will be much reduced and production on our own will improve greatly, which is of great help to making stable supply to customers.
One could therefore speculate that China will continue to be a major supplier of this globally used chemical and that price will in part be reflected by raw material and shipping cost but availability to the UK market could just depend on whether our industry can maintain registration via the actions of the Health and Safety Executive, ministers, politicians and the general public’s voting powers.
