Ammonium sulfate, 2 November 2026: the floor slid $5 to $210 while the allocation is still in the post, and that $10 gap is telling you something specific

The standard range was assessed at $210-220/t fob China this week. Last week it was $215-220.

Read that carefully. The top did not move. Only the bottom did.

A market that is softening widens at the top as sellers compete for buyers. A market that is waiting widens at the bottom, because some sellers have a cargo that must move and others have a cargo they can hold. This is the second kind.

Ten dollars, and it is not a discount

We heard the same sentence from three directions this week, in almost the same words: material for shipment by mid-November is available at $210/t fob, while producers without a prompt commitment are holding indications at $215 and $220+.

That is not a disagreement about value. It is a disagreement about time.

The second export allocation has been talked about at 1.3-1.7mn t for over a week. What has not been published is the split — how much of that tonnage is standard, how much is compacted, and which producer gets what. Until that number exists, a seller cannot commit volume it is not certain it is allowed to ship.

So the market splits into two queues:

• Queue one has tonnage already in hand, a vessel window closing in the next fortnight, and a reason to price it today. That queue clears at $210.
• Queue two has tonnage it believes it will be allowed to ship, no deadline, and every reason to wait for the split. That queue offers at $220 and above, and does not chase.

The $10 between them is the price of certainty. Anyone quoting “$210-220” as a single market is quoting two markets at once.

The domestic ladder says nobody is desperate

The reason the top of the range can sit at $220 while a second allocation is in the pipeline is visible in the ex-works numbers.

Shandong caprolactam-grade at ¥1,240-1,250/t equates to roughly $203-205/t fob. The export price is $210-220/t.

That is a premium of $5-17/t. Compare it with any other Chinese fertilizer export line and it is thin. Thin enough that a producer does not need to chase a foreign bid, and thin enough that he will not give away $10 to win one.

A seller who can clear tonnage domestically at parity, take his allocation, ship what is already committed and wait, is behaving rationally. That is exactly what the market is doing.

Brazil took 773,000 tonnes in November, and all of it was ours

This is the number that should reframe how you think about Chinese ammonium sulfate.

Two facts sit in that table, and the second one is the interesting one.

First: Chinese ammonium sulfate arrivals into Brazil rose 12pc month on month, into a market that was already the single largest destination for the product. The allocation uncertainty did not stop the ships. Whatever the paperwork says, the physical flow is running.

Second: in the same month, in the same country, Chinese urea accounts for about 57,000t out of 584,000t. Brazil’s urea comes from Russia, Nigeria, Oman and the UAE. Chinese urea is a rounding error in a market where Chinese ammonium sulfate is the market.

That asymmetry is not an accident of pricing. It is what happens when one product has sulfur and the other does not. Brazilian compounders and blenders buy ammonium sulfate because they need the sulfur as much as the nitrogen, and there is no substitute for it in a 20-20-0 or an NPK formula. Urea is a nitrogen unit that can be sourced from four continents. Ammonium sulfate, for Brazil, is sourced from one.

The 42pc premium is the ceiling, not the floor

Here is the constraint nobody wants to talk about in a tight market.

A compounder running a formula can move nitrogen between ammonium sulfate and urea. Not perfectly — sulfur, granule strength, and handling all differ — but at the margin, on a nitrogen-unit basis, they can. At a 42pc premium the incentive to do so is not theoretical. It is the first line in a procurement manager’s spreadsheet.

Two things have held that premium where it is: tight ammonium sulfate supply, and expensive European gas that keeps urea costly. The second of those is now moving.

European front-month gas fell roughly 10pc within a single session on reports of potential mediation in the Middle East — from above €103/MWh to the low €90s. If that holds, European urea production costs fall, idled European capacity becomes economic again, and the nitrogen price that ammonium sulfate is benchmarked against comes down.

A 42pc premium is defensible when the substitute is expensive. It is much harder to defend when the substitute gets cheaper.

We are not calling a turn. One session is not a trend, and gas markets have reversed on rumour before. But this is the first week in over a month where the substitution argument moved in the buyer’s favour rather than the seller’s.

What to watch

The split, when it is published. A total of 1.3-1.7mn t means very little without knowing how much of it is compacted. If compactors receive a generous share, Brazil cfr has room to soften from $255-265. If they receive a thin share, the compacted premium widens and standard stays where it is. This one number decides the shape of the first quarter.

Whether $210 becomes a print or stays an offer. Right now $210 is the level at which prompt material is available. It becomes a market when a cargo actually clears there. Watch for a reported deal at $210: that confirms the prompt queue is real. A deal at $215 instead tells you the prompt queue was thinner than it looked.

Brazil’s December bookings. October at 690,000t and November at 773,000t means the requirement is covered into the year-end. A light December is what turns a covered market into a soft one in January — and January is when the allocation tonnage will actually be hitting the water.

The nitrogen premium. 42pc today. Under 40pc and the substitution story starts to bite. Over 45pc and buyers have no choice but to pay. This single ratio explains more about ammonium sulfate pricing than any supply headline.

European gas, weekly. Not the daily print. The question is whether the €90s hold for a fortnight, because that is the timeframe on which European producers decide whether to restart ammonia lines — and ammonia is the other half of the ammonium sulfate cost story.

Prices as assessed on 2 November 2026. Market information from our own trading desks and trade sources; figures are indicative and move daily. Terms are quoted per inquiry and confirmed in the sales contract.