China to Keep Exporting Phosphate, Importing Potash

KTIC Radio recently reported that the largest producer and consumer of fertilizer, China has higher production than demand of both phosphate and nitrogen. As a result, the company will keep selling its surplus on the export market. On the potash front, however, the country has limited resources and production capacity.
According to the article:

China has 23% surplus nitrogen production and a total of 600 nitrogen fertilizer producers. Sixty percent of the nitrogen production is urea, and production capacity has kept increasing every year. However, this forced some of the old or small facilities out of the market.

As production surplus and environment issues became problems in China, the government tried to adjust the industry structure by promoting new, efficient facilities and close old, inefficient ones.

Yibin He, marketing manager of Anhui Hongsifang Co., Ltd commented:

Our production capacity was 80.7 million (metric) tons in the year 2014. There was a new capacity of 6.0 mmt added to the industry last year, while 5.0 mmt of old capacity moved out from the market in the meantime; this year, we will have a new production capacity of 4.5 mmt operating, while 3.0 mmt of old capacity will be closed.

There will be a slower increase in production capacity in China in the next five years until the production capacity reaches the peak, as the government planned; after 2020, the production capacity is not going to increase, or will be lower,” said He, “China’s export volume may be less than 15 mmt in the future.

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