According to the latest news from International, ICL Israel has become the second producer to sign a contract with China for standard potassium chloride at the same price as Canada’s Canpotex earlier this month, at $CF307 / ton. Under the contract, ICL will supply 800,000 tonnes to its Chinese customers this year, with options for an additional 350,000 tonnes.

According to the current situation, there is still no new news from Russia and Belarus, but China’s current overall supply of goods is more adequate, and there is a large amount of imported potassium to supplement.

From the latest customs data, China’s potassium chloride imports in May in 659,200 tons, a decrease of 29.85%, the average import price of 496.79 US dollars/ton, 2023 January to May China’s total imports of potassium chloride in 4.171,600 tons, an increase of 20.73%.

Among them, in May imports, the largest imports for Belarus, imports reached 367,000 tons, the second for Russia, imports in 112,200 tons. However, from the data of border trade, the import volume of small border trade is only 15,000 tons. Most of the Belarusian and Russian import sea freight and the freight source of the Central European freight train entered the bonded area, and the volume of bonded cargo continued to increase.

At present, the price trend of the domestic potassium chloride market continues to be low, although most industry insiders are still not optimistic about the late market, but also said that under the recent market price, the space to continue to decline is relatively limited, and some varieties have fallen below the cost price of large contracts. However, in the traditional July, the main downstream compound fertilizer factories in China entered a state of decline, the operating rate continued to be low, only by a small amount of chemical and potassium sulfate, potassium nitrate and other processing enterprises raw material demand, the overall favorable support for potassium chloride is still insufficient.

On the whole, the supply of domestic potassium chloride is in a sufficient state, but the demand side is limited, and the contradiction between supply and demand is still prominent. However, from the price point of view, even if there is insufficient demand, the possibility of potassium chloride prices to continue to decline significantly is small, after falling below the cost price, the supply is more concentrated, mostly in the hands of large and medium traders, and the stable intention is strong in the market, so the late potassium chloride market may maintain a weak trend.

Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China

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