Brazil canceled 177 agrochemical registrations in 2023

In 2023, the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) canceled 177 agrochemical registrations, revealed Flavio Hirata, an agronomist specializing in pesticide registration and partner at AllierBrasil, an agribusiness consultancy, to AgroPages. Of this total, 48 registrations of technical products and 129 formulated products were canceled. Among these, 89 were at the request of the companies holding the registrations.

According to Hirata, the canceled registrations represent almost one-third of the registrations approved last year, totaling 555 products. In the past five years, there have been 2,737 approvals, directly impacting the market with increased competition, more players, lower prices, and longer payment terms (for importers). 

″Product registration is the gateway to market access. Registering a technical product and its formulated product can take 10 years or more, with costs exceeding $100,000, plus annual maintenance fees,″ explains Hirata.

The specialist specifies that among the canceled registrations, notable ones were products based on carbendazim (22), pyraclostrobin (15), fipronil (9), and mancozeb (8). ″With the ban on carbendazim by Anvisa, most companies holding these registrations requested their cancellations. Still, there are 21 registrations based on the active ingredient in MAPA's Agrofit system. Products based on fipronil had the third-highest number of cancellations, likely due to Ibama’s ban on foliar application,″ he notes.

According to Hirata, 43 cancellations were of registrations approved between 2019 and 2023, representing 24.29% of the total products that did not last five years in the market. The ″Report: Cancelled Registrations (2023)″ by AllierBrasil highlights that 16.38% of these cancellations in the past five years were approved after the beginning of 2021. The same study points out that 2021 and 2022 were the years with the highest number of approved registrations resulting in cancellations in 2023, and most of the cancelled registrations were of equivalent products.

Regarding canceled registration applications, which are registration processes that have not yet been completed, MAPA canceled 85 processes, including 17 rejections for 33 technical products and 52 for formulated products. ″Regarding cancellations, it is common for registering companies to request the cancellation of the application before the process is denied, to avoid it being published as such,″ highlights Hirata.

He warns that the number of registration cancellations tends to be much higher because Article 35 of the Pesticide Law stipulates that ″once the registration for the pesticide is issued, the registration holder has up to two years to start production and commercialization of the product, under penalty of cancellation of the granted registration.″

″Approval of a registration can take 10 years or more, and ironically, the registration will be summarily canceled if not marketed within 2 years,″ concludes the specialist.

Issues related to agrochemical registration will be the subject of several lectures at the 15th Brazil AgrochemShow, to be held on August 13 and 14 in São Paulo, organized by AllierBrasil.

List of canceled agrochemical registrations

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)

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