Ammonium Sulfate, 23 October 2026: China FOB $215-220 on Offers, Not on Deals

This note covers the ammonium sulfate market as it stood on 21 October 2026, and it is dated for a reason: the numbers below were true that day and will not be true for long.

The short version. Fob China for standard caprolactam-grade moved to $215-220/t from $210-220/t a week earlier. Compacted held at $220-230/t. The Shandong domestic benchmark, which had been sliding for six straight weeks, stopped falling at ¥1,230/t — about $201/t fob equivalent.

So the export price went up and the domestic price stayed put. What makes that interesting is not the size of the move. It is that almost nothing was confirmed at the higher level.

The week in numbers

All figures are indicative market assessment levels as at 21 October 2026, from our own monitoring and published industry assessments. They are not offers.

A price rising into an empty order book

One northern supplier was offering standard at $215/t fob. Others quoted above that. Very little was concluded.

That combination, offers moving up while transactions stay scarce, is worth reading carefully, because it can mean two opposite things. It can mean demand is about to arrive and sellers are positioning ahead of it. Or it can mean sellers have nothing left to sell this quarter and are marking up what little they have.

In this case it is mostly the second. Chinese export volumes are limited by allocation rather than by production. Most holders of approved tonnage report being sold out for the near term, so there is no competitive pressure forcing anyone to chase a cargo. When the offer book is thin, a price can drift up on optimism alone.

The clearest evidence of how thin the market is sits in the off-spec discount. MMA-grade was indicated at $175-180/t fob, roughly $35-45 below standard. A wide gap between the headline grade and the next grade down is what a market looks like when buyers cannot get the grade they want and sellers know it.

The domestic price stopped falling

Six weeks of decline ended at ¥1,230/t ex-works in Shandong, unchanged week on week. River producers were steady too. That matters more than it looks.

Through September and early October, the domestic price fell while the export price held, and the gap between them widened. That gap is an exporter’s margin, and it was the single best argument for why Chinese fob would eventually have to come down.

That argument just lost its momentum. With domestic flat and export up $5, the spread is now roughly $14-19/t. It is not collapsing. It is also not widening any further on its own.

Two ways this resolves. If allocation is released in volume, the export premium compresses and fob follows domestic down. If domestic turns and starts rising on gas costs or production cuts, export fob has a floor under it for the first time since August. Right now the market is balanced between those two, which is exactly why so little is trading.

Korea is the only clean test this week

A South Korean importer issued a tender for 6,000t of standard ammonium sulfate, closing on 22 October for arrival at the end of November.

Small in volume, large in information. It is the first properly specified, dated, competitive requirement since fob moved to $215-220, and the award will tell the market whether the new level is real. Award near $215-220 and every offer in the stack is validated. Award below $210 and the low end gets cut within a week.

For a buyer in Southeast Asia or Latin America, a Korean award is a useful reference point for the same reason: it is a public, comparable, delivered-into-a-port number, not a phone quote.

Elsewhere the confirmed business is sparse. A 2,000t cargo into Myanmar cleared at $280/t cfr in the previous week, which is consistent with a Chinese fob in the low $220s once freight and bagging are added. Nothing in the current week contradicts it.

The cost line nobody is quoting

Sulphur into North Africa went to $990-1,010/t for the third quarter, against $650-700/t in the second. Tampa was assessed at $705/t, up $50. That is not a drift, it is a reset.

The temptation is to read it straight across into ammonium sulfate and expect offers to jump. That would be wrong, and understanding why is worth the next two minutes of your time.

Ammonium sulfate reaches the market by three main routes, and only one of them carries sulphur as a direct, immediate cost. Synthetic material, made from ammonia and sulphuric acid, does. Caprolactam by-product and coking or steel by-product material carry it indirectly at most, and their output is driven by the parent plant’s operating rate, not by the fertiliser price.

So a sulphur spike does not lift the whole market. It widens the spread between routes, makes synthetic material the marginal, price-setting tonne, and puts a floor under the by-product grades that dominate Chinese export supply. For a buyer, that is a reason to know exactly which route your supplier’s tonnage comes from. Our production source guide covers how the three differ in practice.

Where the premium actually sits

Europe. Granular caprolactam-grade was assessed at €375-403/t fob northwest Europe against €308-325/t for standard, which is a spread of roughly €70/t for the same chemistry in a different physical form. Chinese compacted at $220-230/t fob is not competing with that number directly, because the European price reflects a shortage of local granulation capacity rather than a shortage of ammonium sulfate.

Brazil is the other pole. Compacted delivered into Brazilian ports was $260-265/t cfr with the high end firming, against standard at $245-250/t cfr. The $15 gap is granulation plus freight and it has held for weeks.

The practical point: if you are paying for granulation, buy the form you actually need and check the particle size distribution, not just the analysis. If you are blending, crystalline at a $5-10/t discount to compacted may be the cheaper input even after your own handling costs. The two forms are not interchangeable, and the price gap between them is not a discount you can always arbitrage.

If you are buying in the next sixty days

Ask for the allocation before the price. In a sold-out market, a supplier who can confirm tonnage for your window is worth more than one quoting $5 lower with nothing behind the offer. This is the single most useful question you can ask this month.

Treat every cfr number as parcel-specific. China to Southeast Asia freight has been moving between roughly $43 and $50/t depending on origin port and parcel size. A delivered price quoted for someone else’s 8,000t cargo does not transfer to your 1,000t trial order.

Match grade to destination, and say so in the enquiry. Brazil takes compacted. Southeast Asia and Australia-New Zealand blending programmes take crystalline. Europe is short of standard specifically, not of ammonium sulfate generally. Naming the grade and the form gets you a comparable price instead of a range.

Do not assume the fob has peaked or that it has bottomed. Both cases depend on a single variable, the next export allocation round, and nobody outside the allocation process knows the timing. Buy the tonne you need for the window you have, and leave the speculation to people who are paid for it.

Watch list

The base case from here: fob held up by allocation scarcity into early November, domestic flat to slightly softer, compacted firm on Brazilian demand, and the whole structure resting on when the next allocation round is announced.

Sourcing ammonium sulfate from China

We supply standard, granular (compacted) and crystalline ammonium sulfate from China to agricultural, compound-fertilizer and industrial buyers, loading at Qingdao or Tianjin with full export documentation.

• Ammonium Sulfate — the full grade range and typical specifications
• Granular Ammonium Sulfate — for direct application and bulk blending
• Crystalline Ammonium Sulfate — for compound fertilizer and industrial use
• How to import ammonium sulfate from China — documentation, inspection and shipping

Send your destination port, the grade and form you need, your volume and your loading window, and we will confirm availability and quote on that basis.

On pricing in this article. All figures are indicative market assessment levels for the grades and bases referenced, as at 21 October 2026, drawn from our own market monitoring and published industry data. They are not offers and do not represent a quotation for any specific parcel, origin or shipment window. This article was published on 23 October 2026; ammonium sulfate prices change with grade, production source, packaging, parcel size, destination and freight, and are quoted per inquiry and confirmed in the sales contract.