As the largest glyphosate producers in the world, China’s most rigorous effluent standard of glyphosate producers would be abondoned because the industry remains vehemently opposed to the regulatory changes fearing the financial repercussions to come in the wake.

Early last year, the CCPIA (China Crop Protection Industry Association) proved instrumental in crafting a governing disposal regarding environmental standard, the “Effluent standard of pollutants for organic phosphate and pesticides industry” aims at increasing accountability and compliance obligations for glyphosate producers. Under the new standard, the glyphosate will be required to install costly environmental management equipment, which could cost some tens of million Yuan. However, Chinese glyphosate industry  consists of dozens of Chinese producers in various sizes and most of them are not financially prepared to deal with such drastic change.

The draft standard has been submitted to the MEP for further expert consideration. Last year, there have been repeatedly reports or news release that the draft will be adopted by the MEP during its environmental verification upon the glyphosate manufacturers. Only a handful of the producers could survive the rectification as the disqualified companies would be ordered to halt production or eliminated from the industry.

However an inside source revealed that the MEP has renounced to push forward the legislative process about the draft. Instead, the MEP is expected to encompass elements of the standard as part of a larger scale effluent standard targeting a wider spectrum of pesticides including the organic chlorines, organic sulfurs, phenoxycarboxylics, pyrethroids, biopesticides, sulfonylureas, heterocyclics, carbamates and amides. Although the new integrated standard will lower some requirement, it is not expected to have any immediate impact these year as the design and implementation of the new standard will take some time.

As per the forthcoming environmental verification launched by the MEP, the competent authorities will issue another verification rules and the scrutiny is far from being as strict as expected. The major target for the MEP is to make sure that the manufacturers have properly treated the mother liquid generated from the “glycine-route”.

Since the start of the year the price of glyphosate has steadily climbed and currently costs 36,000 Yuan per ton. Whilst the global market is dominated by giants such as Monsanto, Chinese producers are set to benefit in line with this price inflation. What remains to be seen is will this “softening” of regulations be seen as an attempt to retrospectively cash in on increased market value or as a genuine attempt to address the concerns of the environment.

Reference Links

• China Securities Journal’s News Release (in Chinese)

• ChemLinked News Released on 5 Sep 2012: China to Conduct Environmental Verifications on Glyphosate Producers