January-april 2020 Brazilian pesticide import market: Asia loses significant market share while Europe grows 10% year on year

2020-06-09

Brazil's purchases of agricultural chemicals from China fell by 40% between January and April 2020, and Asian exports of agricultural chemicals lost significant market share in Brazil.


European exports to Brazil, on the other hand, continued to grow, according to Secex, the Brazilian government agency. From January to April, Brazil bought $590 million in pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. In volume terms, Brazil bought 64,000 tonnes of pesticides from abroad, down 16% from the same period last year. Brazil imported a record 335,000 tons of pesticides in 2019. Brazilian buyers paid $3 billion, down from $3.4 billion in 2014, mainly for insecticides used to control newly emerging bollworms.
In 2019, China and India were the two biggest sellers of pesticides to Brazil. In the first four months of 2020, however, the Asian giants' sales fell 28 percent to $199 million. The biggest drop was in China, where exports to Brazil totaled just $69 million, down 40 percent from the same period in 2019. According to industry experts, China is losing market share in Brazil's crop protection products for two main reasons. The first is China's closure of industries that had to adapt to new environmental regulations. Also, earlier this year, China was the first country to halt production due to the novel Coronavirus epidemic. By contrast, European sales to Brazil increased to $102 million in the January-April period, up 10 percent from the same period last year. The top European countries by sales in Brazil this year are Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. In addition, U.S. export sales to Brazil have held steady at $154 million this year.