China has developed into the world's largest manufacturer and consumer of fertilisers. After all, the Middle Kingdom uses more than a third of the world's fertilisers available, which is equivalent to the combined consumption of the USA and India. China is in heavy need of fertilisers to satisfy its growing demand for crops and other agricultural products. 

According to CCM, China uses 40% of its fertilisers on cereal crops, while another 33% is used for fruits and vegetables. The biggest challenge that the country faces is the feeding of its 1.4 billion population with only about 8% arable land. Hence, chemical fertilisers are developed and produced heavily to boost crop yields and scale up agricultural production. The excessive use of chemical fertilisers, however, is raising environmental and food safety concerns. 

China’s fertiliser industry is facing both serious problems and new development opportunities. serious oversupply, cutting excess capacity has been a consensus. Currently, domestic fertilizer capacity has reached 200 million MT. Along with the pressure from policies, reducing the use of fertilizer has become inevitable. 

Alongside the rising fertiliser output, the production technology in China has also evolved throughout the past years. Market intelligence firm CCM analysis the most common production methods and gives insights into China’s overall fertiliser production. 

China’s ammonia synthesis technology comes mostly from overseas companies. However, as China’s technological level advances and research departments are constantly developing new methods of production, some domestic companies already possess self-developed ammonia synthesis technology or ammonia converter. 

There are various production technologies of compound fertilizer in China, with granulation as the key process in production. According to maturity and application degree of process, it can be classified into slurry-spraying, melt spray granulation, tower melting spraying granulation and rotary drum ammoniation granulation process. 

Restricted by production scale and number of products, the slurry-spraying process is adopted by only a few enterprises. With similar theory, melt spray granulation and tower melting spraying granulation are widely used, the difference is that tower granulator and related equipment are introduced into tower granulation. 

At present, dozens of enterprises in China have adopted this process. Ammoniation and secondary dechlorination are adopted in the rotary drum ammoniation granulation. Granulation equipment like coating and disc granulator is also adopted. New compound fertilizer technologies aimed at improving the utilization rate of fertilizer by adding some kind of additives or nutrient elements, increasing the effect of fertilizer, making multifunctional fertilizer or by slow release technology and water-soluble fertilizer technology.