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Fertilizer Market Report – May 7, 2025

Global Fertilizer Outlook – Prices Up Affordability Down

Fertilizer Market Report – May 7, 2025

In this week’s fertilizer report: RaboResearch’s 2025 Global Fertilizer Outlook: Prices Up, Affordability Down; Fertilizers Jazz, Weekly review and Last Week’s North American Urea and Phosphate Price Action.

News of the Week

RaboResearch’s 2025 Global Fertilizer Outlook: Prices Up, Affordability Down

Here are five takeaways from the latest semi-annual report, including the top tariff fronts to watch for impact to fertilizer prices:

With global turmoil and commodity prices not keeping pace with fertilizer prices, RaboResearch is forecasting a global transition to tougher affordability in the second half of 2025.

  1. May 2025 could be the start of a new cycle and demand contraction
  2. Lower supply keeps phosphate prices elevated above average
  3. Nitrogen consumption continues to climb; global market has been reactive to trade activities
  4. The one macro nutrient with a positive index is potash, and it’s forecasted to remain stable.

(Source: AgWeb, Rabobank)
RaboResearch’s 2025 Global Fertilizer Outlook: Prices Up, Affordability Down – AgWeb

Fertilizers Jazz, Weekly review
News about potential China coming back to urea market as soon as in May with a significant amount of 3-4 million tons of product through September immediately weighed on market sentiment. However, market needs to wait for the official confirmation from Chinese government. Potential US sanctions tightening targeted at all petrochemicals products from Iran (perhaps, including fertilizers) might also affect global urea card layout, but again, official confirmation has to be issued first. Last week US importers were desperately trying to secure prompt volumes, but purchasing new lots is already a very high risk, thus June future price for Nola dropped significantly.

Phosphates prices continued climbing and seems like Indian government will not be able to keep the price cap set a week ago for future purchases. But it will also depend on China, as DAP and MAP export renewal is being discussed. On the production cost side, sulfur price increased more last week, supporting bullish trend in phosphates.

(Source: Maria Bezzubova, Senior Consultant, SOCAR Trading)
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North America Urea Last Week  
NOLA urea prices have been on a wild ride lately. Western Canada DEL prices finally reacted after holding steady for nine consecutive weeks.

According to Green Markets, last week, urea delivered prices in Western Canada rose 4.4% to a range of C$880-$915/mt from C$860/mt where it sat for nine weeks. We heard of offers going to C$1000/mt in southern Saskatchewan this week. The last time we saw prices this high was November 2022. We will wait and see what Green Markets reports on Friday.

Urea NOLA prices were strong again, up another 7.2% last week to a range of US$445-$522/st versus US$420-$482/st the previous week.

Direct Hedge framed up the urea NOLA market at the beginning of this week as follows: May was bid/offer US$480/$485/st, June was bid/offer US$395/$410/st. July was bid/offer US$360/$380/st and Q3 was bid/offer US$360/$380/st (up $15 on the bid and $5 on the offer).

North America Phosphate Last Week
According to Green Markets, the delivered Western Canada MAP prices widened WoW to a range of C$1,160-$1,290/mt from a range of C$1,160-$1,190.

MAP NOLA prices were flattish on average to a range of US$645-$660/st from US$658/st the previous week.

Industry Tidbits

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