After Christmas and new year's day, the global recovery of urea demand has not yet emerged. In spite of the limited spot trading, the manufacturer's bid for February shipments is still firm. It is said that India will open a new round of urea bidding in the near future, which will inject the market into the market.

The main topic of last week was about the shortage of urea in China and the need to be met before the slowdown in domestic demand at the end of the first quarter. The price gap between China's urea and other regions is further widening, and the FOB of small particle urea is 310~320 US dollars (ton price, the same below), which is about 10 dollars higher than the previous week.
Due to supply shortage, the FOB price of Indonesia reached 290 US dollars last week, which is 20 yuan higher than the previous sales price in the region. This phenomenon also confirms the view that China's export supply will not improve in February.
Egypt sold a large number of large particles of urea and small grain urea on the FOB price of $266~267 and $242~245. Producers in Egypt and Algeria will continue to raise prices in February, which will maintain offshore price around 270 dollars, but buyers in Europe and Turkey do not seem to be eager to bargain at that level.
Last week, a group of Middle East small grain spot was shipped to Southeast Asia for 260 dollars FOB, while a large number of 5000 tons of large particle urea were sold at 254 U. S. FOB price.
In the buyer's side, it is difficult to see new demand in the market in the near future. Turkey seems to have purchased most of the urea it needs from January to early February, while the market demand of 80% in the first quarter of Europe has also been met.
According to reports, Brazil's total export volume in 2017 was 5 million 300 thousand tons, a record high, up 37% from 2016. In December, the export volume was 710 thousand tons, which made the buyer not eager to enter the market from January to February.
Rumours of India's bidding for urea are growing. At the beginning of January, the treasury stock has dropped to 630 thousand tons in February, release any spot bidding information will promote the Middle East and Asia prices.