Novel Coronavirus | Will it affect Chinese agrochemical companies’ production after Chinese New Year? | Dextra International | Leading Crop Protection consultancy group

During the Chinese New Year, respiratory disease caused by a novel type of coronavirus was detected for the first time and an outbreak occurred in Wuhan, Hubei, China. As of 12:00 noon on January 29, 2020, there were 5,999 confirmed cases nationwide and the death toll exceeded 100. The Chinese government has urgently extended the Spring Festival holiday week, requiring companies and factories across the country to delay the resumption of work.

During this period, AgroPages continued to receive inquiries from readers, who expressed concern about the supply of Chinese agrochemicals in the future. In this regard, AgroPages conducted a survey, targeting the top 100 agrochemical companies in China. They were located in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Guangxi and other major agrochemical manufacturing provinces in China, including major technical and formulation companies of agrochemicals for bulk products such as glyphosate, glufosinate and other major products.

At the close of this edition, more than 70% of the companies had responded to the Agropages survey. The following content is concluded from the information provided.

1. Most Chinese agrochemical companies will stop working for about 2 weeks and then resume production in every Chinese Spring Festival holiday.

2. This year, the governments of Zhejiang and Jiangsu Province clearly stipulated that in view of the need for epidemic prevention and control, enterprises should not resume work earlier than February 9. Therefore, the two provinces’ agrochemical enterprises, including technicals and formulations, will have one week more downtime of production than the normal two weeks.

However, in Jiangsu Province, some enterprises have not stopped production during the holidays and have been operating normally, including 20 agrochemical enterprises in Yangkou Chemical Park in Nantong, Jiangsu, and they will continue to maintain the state of operation. These are mainly manufacturers of mainstream agrochemical products.

3. Many enterprises in Shandong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia and other northern provinces in China, especially the pesticide technical manufactures, have not stopped production during the Spring Festival, and are all in normal production state.

4. Enterprises manufacture bulk agrochemical products such like glyphosate, glufosinate and other mainstream agrochemical products are mostly in normal production during the Spring Festival Holiday. Some of the others will also start production after the holiday ends.

5. According to those enterprises that are in production state, because of the poor logistics due to traffic control, there may be a shortage of raw materials after the holiday. However, some said that the factories will usually reserve raw materials on a 40-day basis, and short-term production will not be affected.

6. Some companies stated that since the epidemic occurred till today, the local government has implemented emergency measures in real time, and the company has also carried out its own safety management and employee protection work.

This novel coronavirus incident is mainly occurred in Wuhan (Hubei Province), and the Chinese government is actively taking measures to deal with the outbreak. Enterprises are generally optimistic that the epidemic situation will be resolved under the effective and strict control by the Chinese government, which they will actively cooperate and support. Under these circumstances, we have reason to believe that the supply of China’s agrochemical products will not reproduce the situation of supply shortage in 2018 due to environmental protection supervision and 2019 due to safety regulations.

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