What happened to shellac in recent years?

In recent years, throughout the global drought, the world is still scarce precipitation, drought all over the world, China, India, Thailand and other major shellac production of raw materials are affected to varying degrees.

People in the industry all know that long-term drought will lead to high average temperature, high evaporation, and extreme water shortage in the soil, which leads to the rooting and development of lac insect host trees in spring. Natural breeding lac insects need to eat a large amount of tender juice of trees when they secrete glue. However, due to the weakness of trees and the lack of tree juice caused by drought, the food of glue insects becomes seriously short, and glue farmers cannot keep them on time, which extremely affects the growth and development of lac insects and the amount of glue secreted. Glue worm is a kind of insect with extremely harsh requirements for living environment. When its living environment is affected, the amount of glue secretion is bound to decline. The arrival of the new dry season, forcing the world into a new battle for shellac resources. Under this circumstance, rubber farmers continue to raise the price of scarce raw gum. Many Indian and Thai customers, even some downstream demand enterprises in Europe, America, Central Asia and the Middle East, etc. flock to buy shellac raw materials in China, which makes Yunnan shellac in the dry spring become a spring rain as expensive as oil. At the beginning of 2013, our factory sent relevant investigators to India, Thailand and other neighboring rubber countries to conduct predictive investigations on rubber production. The conclusions obtained are surprising. The global drought for 4 consecutive years has made the current global rubber production and inventory almost drop to the bottom. The latest data show that the current output of India, the world's largest shellac producer, is less than the 1/3 of previous years, and the output of Thailand and other Asian countries with large shellac production has also dropped sharply, stocks are almost exhausted. However, the domestic situation is not optimistic. All large and small factories in Yunnan, the main factory area, are converted from raw material procurement and balanced production. The current amount of shellac is only a mere 100 tons. Under the international situation of rising raw material prices, all regular rubber factories have raised their prices and determined the supply quantity according to the actual amount of rubber collected. The market once saw a situation of high-priced procurement and no supply. The price of glue keeps rising as a result of the shortage of porridge. The price of glue in India has exceeded the sky-high price of US $15000 per ton. The new shellac production season in the world is coming in 2013. However, looking at the weather changes in the glue-producing areas, the living environment of glue insects is not optimistic. In the face of the increasingly international shellac market, the impact of international glue prices on domestic glue prices is becoming more and cannot be ignored. The arrival of the new rubber season is bound to make the domestic shellac people face the new challenge of rubber price change again!

Driven by the trend of scarcity, we will wait and see where the domestic rubber price will go!

Shuangjiang County Forestry Chemical Plant

February 29, 2013