H1 2016 witnessed recovery in sales of
major amide herbicides and increases in their market prices. Given the constant
downturn in the entire herbicide market, amide herbicides are doubtless a black
horse for the rising price and short supply.
Source: Baidu
Although the prices of amide
herbicides have started to fall back, the herbicides still successfully attract
lots of concerns of industry insiders in H1 2016. Amide herbicides mainly
include acetochlor, metolachlor, pretilachlor, butachlor and so on.
The short supply of amide herbicides pushes up their prices. According to CCM's
price monitoring, in Jan. 2016, the domestic prices hit record lows, but after
that, they started to recover. Of this, acetochlor saw the largest growth.
For instance, the ex-works price of the following amide herbicides all
rebounded in April:
92% acetochlor TC: USD2,844/t up 13.13%
over USD2,514/t in early Jan. 2016
97% metolachlor TC: USD3,756/t, up 2.71%
over USD3,657/t in Jan. 2016
95% pretilachlor TC: USD5,055/t, up 3.69%
over USD4,875/t in Jan. 2016
92% butachlor TC: USD2,628/t, up 1.47% over
USD2,590/t in Jan. 2016
Regarding the price rises of amide herbicides, in Jan. 2016, affected by
environmental factors, upstream chloroacetyl chloride's supply remained tight
and the price rose rapidly, slightly driving up the price of acetochlor TC.
However, as the storage for large acetochlor orders for the slack season had
been completed in early period, downstream enterprises were quite cautious in
taking orders. Therefore, the price rise of acetochlor TC that month was small.
Other amide herbicides, like metolachlor, pretilachlor, butachlor, were
generally in short supply, but their prices did not see great changes.
Nevertheless, as the upstream raw materials – monoethanolamine (MEA) and
chloroacetyl chloride are in further short supply, the prices of all amide
herbicides will get significant promoted as well.
Especially based on the shortage of two major raw materials mentioned above,
acetochlor becomes hot in the market and other amide herbicides are also
influenced as well. Some producers even suspended taking orders in March 2016
and disclosed that the orders had been scheduled to the end of April.
Besides,
since amide herbicides were in the peak season during Jan.-April, the deficient
operating rate further encouraged the prices of amide herbicides to rise. And
this short supply lasted until early May.
Ex-works price of 92% acetochlor TC in
China, June 2015-June 2016
Source: CCM
Ex-works price of 97% metolachlor TC in
China, June 2015-June 2016
Source: CCM
Ex-works price of 95% pretilachlor TC in
China, June 2015-June 2016
Source: CCM
Ex-works price of 92% butachlor TC in
China, June 2015-June 2016
Source: CCM
This article comes from Herbicides China News 1606, CCM
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Tag: herbicides