THE RS GROUP
Due to the pandemic and geopolitical conflict of Russia-Ukraine, the commodities for fertilizer production have been experiencing shortages and increase in their prices. The most relevant commodities that are discussed in the article are urea nitrogen, phosphate (DAP), muriate of potash (MOP) and natural gas.
Before 2020 "normal" price for urea nitrogen was $200 to $300 a ton, but the price has been increasing since, due to the pandemic. Since urea was made of 80-90% of natural gas, this also affected the spike in the pricing (x10 higher than normal), as EU imported the gas from Russia and the market stability for gas went massively awry since the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Many urea manufacturing plants have stopped producing due to continuous increase in natural gas price. The price for urea nitrogen is now at $600-$700 a ton.
DAP price has been increasing since before pandemic but is estimated to continue to rise also due to gas price as it contains ammonia. On top of that, the world's biggest phosphate exporter, China, has implemented new export requirement of inspection certificates to all phosphate exporters which cause supply for phosphate to decrease even more.
Though MOP is the most used potassium in agriculture, there are limited countries that have access to mining it. The supplies has been even more problematic when the geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as Russia and Belarus are the second and third largest supplier of MOP. With high demand and shortage in supply, the price for MOP is predicted to rise until 2023.
The relation between gas and fertilizer market has been discussed throughout the article. To further understand the connection and more information can be found in article by Lebanonturf.
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