Guangxin Agrochemical: Grow Steadily     

Anhui Guangxin Agrochemical Group Co., Ltd., located at Guangde county in southeastern Anhui province, was founded in 1993. It is specialized in manufacturing pesticide/pharmaceutical intermediates, pesticide technical and preparations, mainly including dozens of technical and preparations in bactericide series and herbicide series, such as o-phenylenediamine, carbendazim, diuron and glyphosate. The company says that it has a large production capacity of o-phenylenediamine and carbendazim, and its production technology for carbendazim is competitive world-wide. At present, the company has three production bases mainly distributed in Guangde county, Xuancheng city and Jincheng Industrial Park in Tongling city of Anhui province.
    In 2002, the company established Tongling Chemical Company, a subsidiary of Anhui Guangxin Agrochemical Group in Tongling City as its carbendazim (a phosgenation product) production base. To assist the extended production of this project, the company built several other phosgenation-products industrial chain projects in the Fine Chemical Industrial Park in Guangde county. Among these projects, the Caijiashan Production Base in Guangde mainly produces white carbendazim and grey carbendazim.
    In 2003, the company began to build a 2 000 t/a o-phenylenediamine project, and also completed the construction of a 3 000 t/a carbendazim project.
   In early 2007, in order to realize a complete industrial chain, the company decided to adjust its product portfolio and built a 5 000 t/a plant for making glyphosate from dimethyl phosphite.
   In 2008, relying on the strengths of its neighboring Anhui Chloro-Alkali Chemical Group Co., Ltd., the company decided to set up a joint venture named Guangle Chemical Co., Ltd. with Jiangxi Dianhua Lefeng Chemicals Co., Ltd., to build a 15 000 t/a phosphorus trichloride production line in Guangde. That same year, although hit by the international financial crisis, Guangxin Agrochemical managed to seize the opportunity of declining raw material prices and built a 20 000 t/a glyphosate project (i.e. the second-phase glyphosate expansion project) in its production base at Tongling. During its exploration of overseas markets in March 2008, the company also foresaw that, by the second half of the year, pesticide exports would be greatly disrupted. However, it did not cut production. Instead, it quickly adjusted its business strategy to focus on domestic sales and signed full-year contracts with a number of enterprises at home, thus transforming the sales pattern from its previous 90% exports to 60% domestic sales in 2008, and thus achieved good performance.    
   At present, the company's 2 000 t/a o-phenylenediamine units, 3 000 t/a carbendazim (phosgene and phosgenation product) project, 1 000 t/a diuron project and 5 000 t/a glyphosate project have been put into operation. According to plan, its total investment in the phosgene production base will reach RMB1.8 billion by 2011. The base is now building a 20 000 t/a phosgene product project with input of RMB182 million. Other projects of the company are being carried forward as well, and it is estimated that some new products will enter into trial production in 2009.