The Status And Utilization Of Phosphate Rock Of China And Its Effects On Competitiveness Of Chinese Phosphorus Industry

Chinese government predicted that the phosphate rock would be exhaused in 2010 due to our over exploration. The objectives of my reseach were to clarify the competitiveness of the phosphate rock and the phosphorus fertilizer industry between China and other countries, such as U.S.A and Morocco. For this targets, the condition and utilization of the phosphate rock were compared among those countries, and the phosphorous flow and its value flow in Chinese fertilizer industry were analyzed by means of the substance flow analysis (SFA) and value flow analysis (VFA), and the competitiveness of phosphate rock and its' effect on the international competitiveness of phosphorous industry were analyzed by the comprehensive index.The results showed that there were more advantages of phosphate rock in Morocco and U.S.A than those in China. In China, the phosphate rock had been wasted heavily in recent years. It was estimated that the real recovery rate of phosphate rock was only 45% and the consumption speed exceeded 100 million tons per year. All over the world, the phosphate rock could meet the demand in next 100 years. But in China, if there was no measure to improve the technology of mining to cut down the wastage, the rich phosphate rock (containing P₂O₅ more than 30%) would be used up in 2014. Considering the phosphorous loss in mining and fertilizer manufacturing process, the use efficiency of phosphorous resources merely reached 39.5% in Chinese phosphorous fertilizer industry in 2003. It meant that 2.53 tones phosphorous resources have been consumed when one tone phosphorous fertilizer were produced. The development of high concentrated phosphorous fertilizer would induce the further resources wastage and more environmental cost.In Chinese phosphorous fertilizer industry chain, the interests of fertilizer manufacturing process accounted for 57% of the total additional value. The magnitude of the interests in the three process was manufacturing process>fertilizer wholesale process>retailing process. Different phosphorous products represented variable interests. The magnitude of the interests of every products was Nitric Phosphates (NP)>Compound Fertilizer (NPK)>Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP)>Monoammonium Phosphate (MAP)>Triple Superphosphate (TSP)>Single Superphosphate (SSP). It was found that low efficiency and over competition were the main reasons for the negative interests of Chinese phosphorous fertilizer industry in the past few years. It was also found that the main reason for the lower international competitiveness of Chinese phosphorous Industry was the weak competitiveness of the enterprises because of the high cost of production. For production cost, the phosphate rock was more important than other resources. In the end, some suggestions were given on how to use phosphate rock reasonably and to enhance the international competitiveness of Chinese phosphorus industry in the future.