United Linong: Great Ambitions Based on Technical Innovation    

Zhao Gang, deputy general manager of United Linong, discloses that 60% of its technical grade sulfonylureas is sold abroad. At present, the company's sales revenue increased by about 50% per year - this lays a good foundation for the future stock list of United Linong. In 2009, the sales revenue was RMB150 million for the company, the figure is projected to be RMB200 million in 2010 and RMB300 million in 2011.

   "The fast growth is mainly contributed by the technical innovation," Zhao Gang says, "The Chinese enterprises developed varieties of imitation pesticides in the past years, and there was once a boom for the development of the small and medium size manufacturers that produce imitation crop protection products, but the situation is quite different now. Imitation pesticides also face a rat race domestically as more and more imitation amount and varieties were made in China."
    "In addition, the expiry of the patent for proprietary pesticides was less than past years, thus the opportunity for developing imitation pesticides is narrowed too. The Chinese manufacturers can only find their way to sustainable development in technical innovation," he added. "In early 21st century, the newly-developed varieties of crop-protection chemicals were averagely 12 to 15 a year globally. But the R & D strength has decreased in recent years, averagely 8.9 new varieties were invented a year in the past seven years. The price of bulk crop protection chemicals slumped accordingly. Take imidacloprid for example, the price was about RMB2 000 000/t in the early time of imitation, but it was RMB110 000/t nowadays. There's not a very optimistic prospect for generic crop protection technical products. However, you might need to focus your eyes on formulation instead of technical, and then higher added value may be achieved."
   The technical innovation of the company Mr. Zhao mentioned is oriented in highly efficient, low toxicity, readily biodegradable variety of new pesticide formulations such as microcapsule suspension. "Those pesticides occupy 40% of our total output. Microencapsulation can be used to slow the release of a pesticide, to reduce mammalian toxicity and extend activity, to control evaporation, reduce phytotoxicity and to protect pesticide from rapid environmental degradation. It represents the development trend of the crop protection products, and our sales revenue of microcapsule suspension proved this."
    Mr. Zhao confessed that the company is preparing to go public and plans to launch divisions in South America, Southeast Asia, West Africa and South Africa in the near future, because the regulatory requirements for registration of chemicals in most of these regions are not that high and the company will seize every chance to enlarge the power of itself.