On 28 July, 2015, Guangxi Guitang (Group) Co., Ltd. (Guangxi Guitang) announced to purchase the 100% shares of Guangdong Guangye Yunliu Mining Co., Ltd. (Yunliu Mining). Guangxi Guitang is exploring new profit growth sources and optimizing its business portfolio and profitability to offset the risk to be delisted.

On 12 Aug., 2015, Meihua Biotechnology Group Co., Ltd. (Meihua Bio) published its H1 2015 report, according to which the company revenue increased by 33.6% year on year attributed to the growth in both sales volume and prices of its products.

In order to guarantee the safety in agricultural production and the safety in the quality of agricultural produce and master the production, sale and safety risk conditions of the 4 pesticides, including acephate, carbosulfan, dimethoate and thiodicarb, regions such as Jiangsu and Shandong provinces organised related district- and county-level crop protection and pesticide administrations to make investigations on the production, sale and use of the aforementioned 4 pesticides.

The electric business channel (http://nong.jd.com) for agricultural materials on JD.COM has been launched on August 11, 2015, aiming to provide e-commercial services such as selling seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and farm tools, etc. for farmers national wide. In the meantime, JD.COM has become the first integrated e-commercial enterprise adopting the way of proprietary trading for agricultural materials.

Source: ICAMA

On 29 July, 2015, the Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (BRI, CAAS) held an exhibition regarding the R&D of genetically modified (GM) corn.

On 28 June, 2015, the Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture of China, Han Changfu, said that China plans to reduce its planting area of corn in 2016 and change the planting of corn into other crops as the government is confronted from large pressure from decreasing the large corn inventory.

On 5 Aug., 2015, Henan Entry-exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau (the Bureau) revealed that recently, harmful organism banned from entry, soybean northern stem ulcer germ, was inspected in imported soybean from the US. The volume of the soybean was 63,000 tonnes. This is the first time for Henan to have inspected and intercepted such germ.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) and the China Crop Protection Industry Association (CCPIA), in the first half of 2015, the revenue of the Chinese pesticide industry (calculated by 832 middle and large scale pesticide enterprises) reached USD25.3 billion and their total profit hit USD1.8 billion, which grew by 7.2% and 5.7% year on year respectively.

According to Think Real, China’s export of glyphosate recorded large declines MoM in May 2015: 

-          Volume: 64,985 tonnes, down by 21.2%

-          Value: USD163.6 million, down by 20.6%

Specifically, the export volume of glyphosate technical reached 22,733 tonnes, down by 19.1%. The corresponding value summed up to USD80.3 million, down by 21.4%. Meanwhile, the figures of glyphosate formulations (13 ones, 41% IPA, 51% IPA, 62% IPA, etc.) recorded 42,252 tonnes, down by 22.3% and USD83.3 million, down by 19.8%.