Fertiliser market quiet as arable sales dry up

By Roger Chesher

IT was a quiet week, with little or no changes in pricing and very little volume movement.

Normally we would expect top-up purchases of nitrogen around now, but with the current state of agricultural finances and the fact that the market is virtually exclusively on a cash-only basis, the arable buyer is not buying.

The trend to purchase only for immediate consumption looks set to continue.

Some grazing products are being sold, but the active second-cut market has yet to start.

Any thoughts that inactivity will draw the price down should be discounted. The supply situation is still low.

Kemira has yet to enter their period of planned shutdown in May, and Hydro are once more suffering problems with nitric acid at Immingham.

The problem has yet to be identified and no date for restarting the plant has been set, so Extran is in short supply as the company tries to source alternative supplies.

Shortage of nitrogen granules will inevitably have a knock on effect on supplies of NK products for the silage market, and so the price creeps up to 116/t.

The domestic manufacturers still hope for 120/t for ammonium nitrate at the end of the season.

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