This year’s CAC event took place at a shiny new venue, the Shanghai New International Expo Center, and it delivered as promised: a far larger, more open and comfortable space for buyers and sellers to do business, network and scope out new partners.
Un paseo a través de un edificio enorme tras otro devorado por más de 850 expositores (era la Gran Muralla de stands, repleta de asistentes de todos los rincones del mundo) insinuó cuánto ha explotado el mercado de agroquímicos chino desde que CAC debutó hace 14 años. .
En la conferencia organizada por CCPIT CHEM antes de la feria comercial, los expertos de la industria compartieron sus conocimientos sobre el pasado, el presente y el futuro de la cadena de valor de la protección de cultivos para los mercados desarrollados y en ciernes, incluidos Brasil, Tailandia, la Unión Europea y China.
Agchem expert Hu Xiaoxing of the China National Chemical Information Center consultancy (CNCIC) addressed tough challenges the Chinese are facing, explaining that they have lost market share to larger overseas companies in recent years because of a tendency to be too passive in developing new markets. Competitors elsewhere are actively registering products, taking their pick among the growing list of Chinese suppliers, which are forced to keep lowering their prices. “Quality should be the foundation. We need to take initiative to register our products overseas,” she urged.
But the biggest reason Chinese players have lagged multinationals in profit performance is underinvestment in R&D. “Syngenta and Bayer invested hundreds of millions of dollars from 2009 to 2011, amounting to 8% to 10% of revenue, while China invested 1% to no more than 2% in R&D,” Hu said.
Reversing this trend won’t be easy, but improving processes and developing cleaner environmental technologies for products like glyphosate, imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos, along with equipment automation levels, can elevate China’s status above being the crop protection market’s famous low-cost generic player.
“Because of genetically modified seed developments and the shortage of energy in the world, we can’t do away with glyphosate. Its future is still promising,” Hu added. She offered as examples the strides made in treating wastewater. “As long as we try to innovate, no matter how old or new the products, we can raise the added value of products, increase competitiveness and achieve greater success in imports and exports.”
¿Está China lista para Brasil?
Flavio Hirata, agronomist and AllierBrasil partner, said 2012 “marked a very clear change” in how Chinese manufacturers perceive the Brazilian market, as notorious for its high barriers to entry as the Chinese have been in the past for its submission packages attached to addresses and companies of questionable existence.
“There is a new impulse of Chinese companies to access the Brazilian pesticide market,” Hirata said. “Many companies go to Brazil without any strategy. They think, ‘keep moving with registration and when the problem appears we’ll face it.’ The chances to fail are high. Start from others’ mistakes and save time and money, choose the right connections and the right distributors. The Brazilian pesticide market is completely different than any other market in the world.”
Hirata said 2013 sales in Brazil are expected to be $10.6 billion versus $9.38 billion in 2012. He noted a “very strong shortage” from suppliers in China last year.
En el CAC también estuvo presente el veterano de la industria Matthew Phillips de Phillips McDougall, quien ofreció una visión mayoritariamente positiva sobre los agroquímicos para 2013, ya que los altos precios del trigo y otros productos básicos impulsan el gasto en protección de cultivos. Se espera que la estabilización de los precios del glifosato continúe en 2013. Sin embargo, una acumulación de productos que no se usó el año pasado debido al clima severo en los EE. UU. Y Europa podría obstaculizar las mejoras de precios.
For agchem players, the list of complicating factors is growing. Fast-rising energy costs eat up growers’ crop protection dollars, and the harsh regulatory environment is tightening the reins on R&D spending. Research in seed and traits has taken a bigger piece of the pie. In 2000, almost 70 molecules were in development, compared with only 30 in 2011.
Ha sucedido lo inevitable: menos ingredientes activos nuevos impulsa el gasto en lugar de proteger los derechos de propiedad intelectual de los productos químicos existentes.
It was a common theme heard at CAC that Phillips reiterated: It is those players investing in new formulations that will be in a position to compete effectively. “If you are making technical products you are stuck at the bottom,” he said. Phillips expects about 2.2% growth per year in the crop protection market through 2016.