Vietnam Adjusts Export Tariff on Yellow Phosphorus

In March 2011, Vietnam adjusted export tariff on yellow phosphorus to 5%. Vietnam started the production of yellow phosphorus since 2004; its output reached 30,000 t/a by rapid development and expansion in the past years, and most of the products are mainly for exports.

In 2010, India imposed an anti-dumping duty of on Chinese imports of sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), up to USD0.671 per kilo. STPP is a chemicals used in the manufacture of household cleaning products. Later in that year, the U.S announced a rule to levy anti-dumping duty on Chinese phosphate, the rate is 69.58%-95.40%. So did Mexico.

Back to 2003, Russia's NO. 1 company of yellow phosphorus went into bankruptcy, which represented that there would be no production of yellow phosphorus in Russia, and Russia would be completely dependant on its neighbor-Kazakhstan.

Although China is abundant in phosphorus resources, it is not rich. The proven reserves of phosphorus resources in China ranks the second with total volume of 17.86 billion tonnes with the reserves of high-grade phosphorus ores only 1.108 billion tonnes, accounting for 17% of its total phosphorus reserves. The capacity of yellow phosphorus is about 1.9 million tonnes, ranking the first in the world and the consumption of phosphorus ore in China also ranks the first in the world. Statistics has showed that 80% of Chinese phosphorus resources is used as fertilizer which makes better growth of crops. At present, the world's production capacity is more than 2.40 million t/a while China accounts for about 83%, which makes China the largest producer of yellow phosphorus.