AgroPages-China’s Jiangsu Province taking corrective environmental action on chemical industry-Agricultural news

From July to August 2016, a new round of environmental regulatory compliance inspection was implemented across all regions of China, which led to findings of a number of provinces with serious chemical contaminations.

Some days ago, as a response to the results of the inspection, Jiangsu Province announced its correctional plan, including some specific measures to be taken as regards to the chemical industry.

The chemical industry is a prime industry of Jiangsu Province, but the production and technical process are quite low end. There are currently 6,341 chemical enterprises in the province, only 30 percent of which are present in the chemical industrial parks. In some cities, enterprises present in chemical industrial parks account for only 10 percent. For this reason, the correctional plan requires that the number of chemical enterprises of the province should be significantly reduced, total chemical pollutant discharge should also be significantly reduced, and more than 50 percent of the chemical enterprises of the province should be present in chemical industrial parks. Some of the specific measure to be taken are as follows:

1. No chemical industrial parks will be newly approved; no chemical project will be approved to be located outside of chemical industrial parks; no extension/renovation project of existing enterprises in the chemical industrial parks will be approved, in case that the existing enterprises are not operating in a stable manner or are not running productions in proper compliance with environmental regulations. No extension of qualification and renewal of product certification will be granted to high-toxic and high-residue pesticide production enterprises.

2. By the end of December of 2018, chemical enterprises with outdated production equipment and process that are not able to fulfill environmental requirements will be definitely terminated.

3. Guanyun Lingang Industrial Zone will stop new constructions of pesticide, pharmaceutical, dyeing and intermediate projects. Industry sectors not conformable to industry development guidelines or project prohibited by government will be put on the shutdown list.

4. The 14 dyeing, pharmaceutical and pesticide intermediate projects involving seven enterprises within Yancheng Coastal Chemical Industrial Park will be corrected; constructions violating law and regulations will be shut down and demolished without exception by the end of May of 2017. No new construction of pesticide, pharmaceutical and dyeing intermediate projects will be approved.

5. Sensitive objects within chemical industrial parks will be demolished or relocated and efforts will be made to promote the business transformation of the enterprises within the chemical industrial parks to ensure non-existence of sensitive objects within the protective distance of chemical industrial parks. In case these corrections fail by the end of December of 2018, the chemical industrial park status will be called off.

The public listed pesticide enterprises in Jiangsu Province include Nanjing Red Sun, Jiangsu Changqing Agrochemical, Jiangsu Huifeng Agrochemical, Jiangsu Lanfeng Biochemical, Limin Chemical, ABA Chemical, Jiangsu Flag Chemical, Nantong Agrochemical, Jiangsu Yangnong Chemical, Jiangsu Suli, Jiangsu Dongbao Agrochemical, Jiangsu Tuoqiu Agrochemical and Jiangsu Kuaida Agrochemical.