Tag: Prices

Alistair Wallace, Head of Fertilizer Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for nitrogen.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media

Nutrien is the world’s largest crop nutrient company with a market capitalisation of almost $20 billion (Figure 1). This fertilizer industry giant produces and distributes over 25 million tonnes of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products for agricultural, industrial and feed customers globally. The company’s agriculture retail business also serves over 500,000 growers worldwide through a network of international outlets.

This year appears to be determined to illustrate the limitations of forecasting. Projecting trend lines into the future, looking at expected completion dates for major projects and global economic projections are all worthwhile activities, and can provide valuable insights for business people, but any prediction is apt to be derailed by what one of our prime ministers supposedly once described airily as; “events, dear boy, events.”

Claira Lloyd, Sulphur Editor and Sulphur Fertilizers Team Leader, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

Middle East supply will return to normal at the start of the second quarter with bottlenecks in the UAE and maintenance in Saudi Arabia at an end. But this is unlikely to result in lower Middle East f.o.b. prices until the second half of April, if not early May. This is because buyers who found it hard to find March loading cargoes will snap up any April product as soon as it’s made available.

Alistair Wallace, Head of Fertilizer Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for nitrogen.

The impact of coronavirus on both supply and demand continues to provide considerable uncertainty to the market. With much of Hubei province on lockdown, and a corresponding reduction in ammonia demand for DAP production, Chinese imports appear to be down, pushing more ammonia onto the international market and creating generally bearish sentiment.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media

A New Year is typically a time for taking stock, for looking back at the year just gone, and thinking about the year to come. This year of course marks a bigger transition, from the 2010s to the 2020s. The past decade has been a volatile one, existing under the shadow of the global financial crisis of 2008-09, from which the world was still just emerging in 2010. Over the past decade, ‘quantitative easing’ has helped prevent deflation and driven a decade long stock market rally, but also kept both public and private debt levels high, as interest rates stay low. Weaning the global economy off QE has proved to be far more difficult than many anticipated.