Pheonix Research - Editorial Index
Editorial analysis anchored to industries, segments, and the market intelligence behind them.
Pernod Ricard completed the sale of Jacob's Creek, Campo Viejo and Brancott Estate to Accolade's owner on 30 April 2025, creating Vinarchy — 32 million cases at roughly A$46.88 each, against Treasury Wine Estates' A$138.10. In a market that cannot grow volume, that gap is the whole strategy.
China imported 207 million litres of wine in 2025 — 1.0 per cent of what the world drank. It paid USD 6.86 a litre for it, at least 1.6 times the world export average. That is how a rounding error becomes a price-relevant buyer.
The EU's December 2025 wine package pays growers to grub up vines, caps crisis distillation at 25 per cent of each member state's envelope, and defines "alcohol-free" for the first time. Four measures, and every one of them is a supply-side admission.
De-alcoholised wine now has a legal definition, a comparative claim and a permitted route for sparkling. It does not have a volume series — and the reason is structural: a litre of 0.0% wine is not a vineyard litre.
Wine's volume falls 1.19 per cent a year and its value rises 3.81 — which means the entire forecast is a price rise of 5.06 per cent a bottle. At 2025 prices and 2033 volume the market would be USD 48.3 billion smaller than it is today.
RTD alcoholic beverages grow at 8.00 per cent against wine's 3.81 — but from a base 12.4 times smaller. Wine adds USD 184.2 billion of value to RTD's 36.35. Growth rate is not value creation.
Premium wine is 14.05 per cent of the world wine market and grows 1.4 times as fast — worth 20.7 per cent of all the value the category will add. Its share moves 0.215 points a year, which is a drift, not a revolution.
Wine led spirits by USD 34.7 billion in 2025 and is growing 1.19 points a year slower. Run both report's own published rates and the lead is gone in 2031 — leaving USD 19.9 billion the other way by 2033.
TCPP is 9.46 per cent phosphorus and sells its contained phosphorus at 5.87 times the element; BDP at 6.67. The multiple is not a margin on phosphorus. It is the price of a UL 94 certificate — and that certificate is under review.
Zhejiang Wansheng's RMB 960 million loss is being read as the price war arriving. The filing says otherwise: gross margin fell 0.30 points, nine months were profitable, and the entire loss is one impairment at one plant being relocated to Thailand.
Of the approval dates moved by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2316, the two phosphonates were moved furthest — to 31 July 2029, thirteen months beyond anything else in the instrument — while the fertiliser file that would end their premium has sat unadopted since 2022.
DCP costs 1.02 per cent of a tonne of feed and 1.60 times its own cash cost in purified acid. Between those two numbers, phytase removes the tonnage and the grade rises.
China exported 46.88 per cent of its tripolyphosphate output in 2025 while the catalogue capped production and output fell 12.14 per cent a year. The export book is not growth — it is displacement, to the places that have not yet banned it.
Phosphite sells its phosphorus at 6.2 times what MAP gets for the same element, and earns a 52 per cent spread on a one-step neutralisation — because the plant cannot use the phosphorus at all.
On the basis the segment's contained-phosphorus ladder uses, the phosphorus inside a tonne of thermal acid is worth RMB 7,688 and the acid is assessed at RMB 6,760. The discount is not a cost. It is a permission.
Phosphorus trichloride is 22.55 per cent phosphorus. Moving one tonne of the element as the chloride moves 3.4 tonnes of chlorine — and the chlorine credit is 69 per cent of the entire gross spread.
The same phosphorus is worth 5.3 times more one molecule downstream. None of that increment is phosphate chemistry — which is why the herbicide's conversion cost never moved.
Feed phosphate sells its phosphorus at 0.70 on an index where the element is 1.00 — the only product in the chain that subtracts value. One calculation explains it: the acid a tonne of DCP needs costs 1.60 times the whole cash cost of the product.
A tonne of STPP carries 0.7203 t of soda ash, and soda ash fell 18 per cent in 2025 — worth RMB 200 a tonne, 11.3 per cent of the entire gross spread. Meanwhile output fell 12.14 per cent a year because the catalogue says it must.
The conversion cost from intermediate to herbicide moved 2 per cent while the price moved 19. At December's RMB 23,700 the glycine route was within RMB 750 of earning nothing — and the phosphorus inside a tonne of glyphosate is worth 1.49 times the entire gross profit.
