Editorial Article
Thirteen Months Longer Than Anything Else in the Regulation
An instrument that decides nothing, and decides this market
On 17 November 2025 the Commission signed Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2316. It approves no new substance. It publishes no risk assessment. It takes no decision on the merits of anything. It does one thing: it moves expiry dates in the sixth column of Part B of the Annex to Implementing Regulation (EU) No 540/2011.
Two of the rows it moves are potassium phosphonates and disodium phosphonate. Both are now approved until 31 July 2029. That is the furthest date in the instrument. The next-latest expiry it sets is 30 June 2028 for clove oil — thirteen months earlier. Everything else lands in 2027 or the first half of 2028.
| Substance whose approval this regulation moves | Expiry after the amendment |
|---|---|
| Potassium phosphonates | 31 July 2029 |
| Disodium phosphonate | 31 July 2029 |
| Plant oils / clove oil | 30 June 2028 |
| Difenoconazole | 31 January 2028 |
| Indolylbutyric acid | 31 January 2028 |
| Plant oils / spearmint oil | 15 January 2028 |
| Extract from tea tree | 15 December 2027 |
| Flurochloridone | 31 October 2027 |
| Diflufenican | 31 August 2027 |
| Aluminium silicate | 31 March 2027 |
| Phosphane | 15 March 2027 |
| Maltodextrin | 28 February 2027 |
Read down that column and it is a queue. The two phosphonates are not at the front of it. They are so far behind the queue that the Commission has given them a date two and a half years past the earliest entries and thirteen months past any other substance in the same act.
That is not administrative trivia. It is the price mechanism of a market worth USD 428.4 million, because the molecule whose approval was moved furthest is also the only fertiliser input in the phosphorus complex whose sale depends on a licence rather than on a nutrient.
Why 42 months is a confession, not a favour
The extension is granted under Article 17 of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, which permits one only where two conditions are both met: the approval can be expected to expire before a decision on renewal can be taken, and the reasons for the delay are beyond the control of the applicant. The duration is then set so that it is sufficient to examine the application.
Every extension is therefore a certification of three things at once: that the Commission cannot finish, that the applicant is not the cause, and that a specific number of months is what remains to be done. In this case the number is 42, and the recital states the reason without adornment:
For the active substances disodium phosphonate and potassium phosphonates, the risk assessment has not been finalised yet by the rapporteur Member State. Taking into account the subsequent steps to be completed in each renewal procedure, the duration of the extension of the approval periods of these active substances should be set at 42 months.
Thirteen years after the substance was first approved, the file is open at the stage of risk assessment. The delay is not the applicant’s, the Commission has said so twice in writing, and the buffer it has bought runs to the middle of 2029.
Fifteen years and ten months, and no conclusion
| Date | Instrument | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 October 2013 | Implementing Regulation (EU) No 369/2013 | Potassium phosphonates approved as an active substance; expiry 30 September 2023 |
| 8 December 2020 | Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/2007 | Approval extended to 31 January 2026 — first extension |
| 19 November 2024 and 8 January 2025 | Admissibility under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1740 | The rapporteur Member State confirms the renewal applications for disodium phosphonate and potassium phosphonates are admissible, complete and timely |
| 17 November 2025 (in force 8 December 2025) | Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2316 | Approval extended to 31 July 2029 — second extension, 42 months |
| 31 July 2029 | — | Expiry, absent a renewal decision |
Add it up. The original term was ten years, 120 months, from October 2013 to September 2023. On present dates the approval will have run 190 months — fifteen years and ten months — before it lapses. The extensions alone are 70 months: 58.3 per cent of the original term granted again, in two instalments, without a published conclusion on the substance.
And note where the delay actually sat. Admissibility is a procedural check — is the application in, on time, in the right format. It was confirmed in November 2024 and January 2025, for a renewal that had to be lodged three years before an approval period then ending in January 2026. The risk assessment that follows it has still not produced a conclusion. The queue position is real: of everything in this instrument, these two files are the ones furthest from a decision.
And a second file, open since 2022
The pesticide file is only half of it. The same molecule is also barred from being a fertiliser, and that prohibition is not provisional.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1009, Annex II, provides that phosphonates shall not be intentionally added to any EU fertilising product. There is no dose at which a phosphite can be a CE-marked fertilising product in Europe, for any function, under any label. It can enter the Union’s fields only as a plant protection product — which requires the active-substance approval just extended, plus a formulated-product authorisation in each Member State, plus efficacy and residue data, plus a holder.
| Date | Step | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| October 2022 | Commission proposal to the Expert Group on Fertilising Products, to amend 2019/1009 so that phosphite biostimulants could be placed on the market as EU fertilising products | Not adopted |
| 21 February 2024 | EBIC contribution to the same group, asking for narrower wording — “inorganic phosphonate salts [phosphites]” in PFC 6 and 7, with a 0.5 per cent cap on unintentional presence | No change to the text in force |
| 1 July 2026 | Consolidated Regulation (EU) 2019/1009 | Annex II still carries the prohibition; no phosphite exception appears |
So the position at the date of the extension is this. On one file, the substance has the most generous timetable in the regulation. On the other, a proposal to let it be sold as what most of its volume actually is has been sitting unadopted for three years. The pesticide approval and the fertiliser prohibition now share a horizon — both run to 31 July 2029 — and neither has been resolved on its merits.
What a closed channel is worth
Here is the arithmetic the licence is protecting, on the parent report’s numbers for 2025.
| What one tonne of P2O5 costs | Basis | Per tonne P2O5 | vs MAP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monoammonium phosphate | RMB 3,853.33 a tonne, 61% P2O5 | USD 779 | 1.0× |
| Potassium phosphite, Chinese merchant | RMB 23,000 a tonne, 59.05% P2O5 equivalent | USD 4,801 | 6.2× |
| Branded 0-28-26 liquid, US bulk tote | USD 16,025.8 a tonne of product at 28% P2O5 | USD 57,235 | 73.5× |
The tote is 11.92 times the Chinese merchant tonne measured on contained P2O5. That gap does not exist because the European or American product is better. It exists because in one jurisdiction the tonne carries a dossier that lets it make a disease claim, and in the other it carries a filing fee. Strip the register and the product re-prices against monoammonium phosphate, where the phosphorus costs a sixth as much.
Which is why the fertiliser file matters more than the pesticide file. The 2022 proposal is the event that would remove the premium — not by banning anything, but by permitting the tonne to be sold as nutrition. A nutrient cannot charge 6.2 times what the nutrient next to it charges. On the segment’s contained-phosphorus ladder, where the element is 1.00, potassium phosphite sits at 3.67: above rock at 0.32, dicalcium phosphate at 0.70, thermal acid at 0.88, monocalcium phosphate at 0.91, phosphorus trichloride at 1.05 and tripolyphosphate at 1.32; below only glyphosate at 5.58. The product with the least usable phosphorus in the chain is priced above every product in it except the herbicide.
The moat is not the chemistry — the chemistry is trivial
Phosphorous acid plus potassium hydroxide gives potassium phosphite and water. One step, atmospheric pressure, a stirred tank. No furnace, no chlorination, no hydrogenation, no by-product. In 2025 that cost RMB 11,037 a tonne to make and sold for RMB 23,000: a gross spread of RMB 11,963, 52.01 per cent of price.
Set it against the rest of the segment. Phosphorus trichloride earns 3.5 per cent. Thermal acid about 12 per cent — after 4,109 kWh a tonne nobody has paid for yet. Tripolyphosphate 21.78 per cent. Feed phosphate 6.76 per cent. Glyphosate’s best route finished 2025 within RMB 750 of earning nothing.
The product made by the simplest reaction in the chain earns eight times the margin of the product made in a submerged-arc furnace. That is not a return on capital, because the capital is a tank. It is not a return on process know-how, because the process is a neutralisation. It is a return on the right to sell, and the regulation above is what confers it.
The corollary is exposure. A tonne of monopotassium phosphite contains 0.258 tonnes of phosphorus worth RMB 6,275.6 — 27.3 per cent of the selling price. A 10 per cent move in yellow phosphorus is worth RMB 627.6 a tonne: 2.7 per cent of product price and 5.2 per cent of the spread. Compare the chloride report, where the same 10 per cent move is 2.7 times the entire margin. This market does not hedge phosphorus because it is not selling phosphorus. What it is exposed to is potash — 0.466 tonnes of KOH a tonne of product, 31.9 per cent of cash cost, made from KCl that closed 2025 at RMB 3,533.33, up 33.33 per cent.
The forecast assumes the register holds, not the chemistry
One line in the parent report’s snapshot table carries the whole regulatory assumption, and it is the only line that does not move:
| Metric | 2025 | 2033 |
|---|---|---|
| Market value (USD million) | 428.4 | 676.0 |
| Volume (thousand tonnes) | 145.2 | 190.0 |
| Revenue per tonne (USD) | 2,950 | 3,558 |
| Value of phosphorus in the tonne (USD) | 761 | 761 |
Value grows at 5.87 per cent, volume at 3.42 per cent, revenue per tonne at 2.37 per cent. The element inside the tonne is worth USD 761 in both years, so its share of the price falls from 25.80 per cent to 21.39 per cent. Every dollar of value growth in this forecast is non-phosphorus. The assumption doing that work is that a registered product’s premium survives at roughly 2.4 per cent a year — and 2025/2316 is the evidence for it: the register was renewed for 42 months at no cost to anyone holding it.
The barrier in China is a filing
The other half of the asymmetry is administrative, and it runs the other way. Under the Fertiliser Registration Measures administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, macronutrient water-soluble fertilisers — the category a phosphite product is filed under — require only a filing, not a registration. Potassium dihydrogen phosphate, the phosphate analogue, is on the exemption list altogether.
So the barrier to selling this tonne in China is a dossier and a filing fee. The barrier to selling the same tonne in France is an active-substance approval the Commission has been unable to complete since 2013, plus a Member State authorisation, plus efficacy and residue data, plus a holder. Two identical tonnes, the same CAS number, one priced at USD 4,801 per tonne of P2O5 and one at USD 57,235.
Watch dates, not trends
- 31 July 2029. The cliff. And note the Commission’s own rule: if a renewal assessment concludes before the extended period ends, the decision is taken at the earliest possible date, and in the case of non-renewal the extension is rescinded. The 42 months is not a guaranteed term; it is a backstop that can be removed from under a buyer.
- The 2022 fertiliser proposal. Still open. If adopted, the European channel opens to a product that today can only enter as a plant protection product. That is a step change in tonnage and a step down in realised price, and the parent report treats it as a sensitivity rather than a forecast because four years of comitology is not a trend.
- An EFSA conclusion on potassium phosphonates. The real event in this market. Not a price sheet, not a shipment figure — a published conclusion, which is what would turn 42 months into a renewal or a withdrawal.
- The 0.5 per cent cap. The EBIC ask would legalise unintentional presence in fertilising products while keeping intentional addition barred. If adopted it changes blending, handling and cross-contamination economics without changing a single label claim — which is exactly the kind of change that moves a market without moving its narrative.
What this article does not claim
- No regional split. The parent report publishes none, deliberately: company volumes across the supply side are undisclosed — Verdesian and Haifa are private — so a five-region table would be invention with decimal places.
- The USD 16,025.8 tote is an asking price from one reseller, used to establish direction and the order of magnitude of the premium, not to size the market.
- The 18 per cent allocation of the 551 kt merchant phosphorous acid pool to phosphite salts is the report’s own estimate, published with a 12–25 per cent band. Every volume and value figure here scales linearly off it.
- The expiry dates are read from the instrument itself — Part B of the Annex to 540/2011 is amended row by row, and the rows quoted above are the rows that matter to this market. The comparison of one row against another is the finding; it is not a claim about how many substances the regulation touches.