I've been curious about the attitude of Phoslock in China, as some of you may know, China's internet trends are not particularly accessible via outside world partly due to language barrier and also because a different search engine (and whole new set of social media) exists in China. For those who don't know, the dominant search engine in China is baidu.com. I did some research (I read/write Chinese) on Baidu and came up with some unexpected results.
In the offical Phoslock CN website, Phoslock is translated as 锁磷剂, first character is 'lock', second is 'phosphorus' and the third is 'agent'. So a straightforward and direct translation. When I search on baidu these 3 characters, I had some interesting findings:
1. There are other products in China with the same Chinese name, but are not Phoslock I think there are more, but here are 3. a) https://www.qj.com.cn/brand/xinnuomei/index/ <- this is one, established in Fujian and registered in USA, or some kind of Sino-America JV as their name implies. They've been around since 2012. b) http://www.pam888.com/cpzx/suolinji.html <- This company is from Beijing but do not seem to have any relationship with Phoslock's Beijing's office. 锁磷剂 is also one of their core products, looks like it is also clay based and is used for water purification. They have several re-sellers over several province, I found 3-4 including Jiangsu, Henan, even Heilongjian (manchuria): http://news.xnnews.com.cn/hyxinxi/20190218/47262069735/oe45882047.html c) http://www.ybzhan.cn/st88323/product_12117497.html <- this one is in Hebei
2. http://muchong.com/t-7035921-1 <- this is an interesting find. This is a regular forum used by general public (e.g. Quora), and this guy (who is a biochemist student) is asking if anyone knew where to get 5KG of 锁磷剂, he specified Phoslock and 'the one from Australia'. He wants to do some experiment with it. This was dated July this year.
3. I found this article about Nanhu (The Southern Lake) in Zhejiang (not far from Phoslock factory), about them cleaning up the lake using a 锁磷剂. No mention of Australia or Phoslock. So I'm not able to tell whether this is the Phoslock product or something else. http://www.803.com.cn/2019/06/26/99603183.html
Anyhow, I sent a message to Phoslock China to ask them what the difference between their product and the companies mentioned in (1). Will be interesting to see how they respond, if they reply at all.
When I enter 锁磷剂 on Baidu, the websites that came up are predominately whole-sales selling this item 锁磷剂 (whether or not the Phoslock version). Most of them are new, there are many many suppliers - hard to tell which is the original manufacture and which are local province franchisees. The upside is, there is clearly a supply and demand going on in China especially on the aspect of environmental clean-ups. The downside is, there are competitors and it's hard to tell at this stage how their products compare with Phoslock. One can only say, with that stamp of approval from one province in China in May is hopefully a sign that Phoslock is considered the premium product - not unrealistic as mainland Chinese hold Australia products in high esteem. (Think A2 milk).
p/s using the same words obtain entirely different results in Google, even when entered in Chinese characters.
PET Price at posting:
$1.38 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)