India eyes Japan salt market
But needs to improve quality to compete with China
| Japan is the largest salt importing country in Asia and India plans to increase its export of salt to Japan to 1 million tonnes from current level of a round 0.28 million tonnes. |
| India needs to improve its salt quality, said salt commissioner, minister of commerce and industry, central government, S Sundaresan while addressing salt industry leaders on the second day of two day salt International conference on Friday. |
| "Unless we improve our quality, the road ahead is very tough," Sundaresan said. |
| Currently Japan imports about 8 mn tonnes salt every year most of which comes from Australia and Mexico. India's export to Japan from Jan-Sept. 2004 was merely 282,000 tonne, while China's total export to Japan is negligible as its total exports to Japan, South Korea, and South Asian countries amounted to 0.8 mta. |
| On the other hand, China, currently a major importer of salt from India, is likely to make efforts to stabilise its domestic demand and look to export salt. |
| "China is expanding its vacuum salt to stabilise the domestic demand," Mao Qingguo, president of China National Salt Industry Corporation told Business Standard. |
| Commenting on the competition over Japan Sursedaran said,"It's an area of concern as China will soon become the top salt producing country surpassing the USA. I think China should start exporting in three to five years." |
| He also informed that China had to import salt in the last two years because of a major flood in South China and major development of caustic soda plants. |
| "We used to export 1-1.5 mta to Japan few years back. But due to the rapid growth of caustic soda there was a greater demand in the last few years, we had to import salt," Mao added. |
| Instead of salt exporter, China became a salt importer since 2004, he said. |
| Ken Nagao, Salt Business of Mitsubishi corporation, Japan said the quality of salt from India is improving. |
| "Japan imports its salt from major salt producers in India like 'Friends' and 'Jakhau' and the quality is improving," he added. |
| Of the total import of 8 mn tonne in 2005 to Japan, Australia and Mexico supplied 3.5 mn tonne each while the rest is imported from other countries. |