Category Archives: Castor Oil – Market

Castor Production in Brazil

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Some key factoids on castor crop production in Brazil:

  • The castor-oil plant is an ideal crop for the extensive semi-arid region of northeast Brazil. It holds some four million hectares of appropriate land that could yield up to 6 million tons of seeds per year.
  • Brazil was a global leader in castor cultivation decades back. But there has been a significant reduction in castor cultivation in Brazil for some time. Now Brazil and China have started to show signs of expanding their production base. But the increases have not been significant enough.
  • Brazil has a National Biodiesel Strategy which proposes castor as one of the feedstocks for biodiesel production. Planting of castor is also being promoted especially in the north east.
  • Israel’s Evogene, which specializes in genetic modification of plants for industrial purposes, has signed a deal with Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in Oct 2014 to develop technologies for the advancement of castor cultivation in Brazil.
  • The cooperation will focus primarily on technologies for controlling castor-specific diseases as well as practices for castor cultivation in rotation with soybeans.

See this post for details on quantum of castor crop production and castor seed yields in Brazil.

Prominent Castor Companies in China

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China is the second largest producer of castor seeds and castor oil, though admittedly, a distance second to India.

The below table provides details of most prominent companies in the castor oil industry in China and the products produced by them.

Company Products
TongliaoTongHua Castor Chemical Co., Ltd Castor oil basic grades, DCO, DCO, 12-HSA, Sebacic Acid, Sulphonated castor oil, Li, Mg, Al 12-HSA, Other stearate products and Dioctyl Stearate (DOS), etc
Zouping County Tianxing Chemical Industry Co., Ltd Castor oil basic grades, Sebacic acid, Dimethyl sebacate, Dibutyl Sebacate (DBS), 2-Octanol, 12-Hydroxy Stearic Acid, Castor Cake
Liaoyang Huaxing Chemical Co., Ltd Specialty chemicals from castor oil

Castor Trade Logistics – Supply Chain and Distribution Channels for the Castor Seed and Castor Oil Industry

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Within India, the leading country for castor seeds and castor oil, the logistics and distribution for both seeds and oil follow some specific patterns.

This blog post provides more details on this aspect of the castor industry.

Distribution of castor seeds in India follows a particular process.

The process mentioned below is representative of a typical distribution of castor seeds in India.

  • Castor seeds are bought to the auction place from the farms
  • At the auction place, traders buy the castor seeds through an auction process. There are many traders who do this in each city
  • Then, there are a few large brokers who interact with the traders and who in turn are contacted by the crushers & refiners for purchase

The supply chain thus looks as follows:

castor

Pricewise, if X (Rs) is the price per Kg when it is auctioned, the price at which the crusher receives it is about 1.05 X (a 5% increase). This increase results by way of commissions to traders and brokers and for transport costs to the crushing unit.