This is an undisputed fact that fertilizer prices are generally high this year. Whether nitrogen fertilizer, phosphorus fertilizer or potassium fertilizer, compound fertilizer, the overall operating interval more than the previous year to a new step, although during the period also fell, but the range is relatively limited in previous years, the overall price center of gravity has a fluctuating upward trend. Especially in May, ammonium phosphate and potash fertilizer opened a new round of rising mode.

_From January to July 2018, the monitoring data show that among the 10 representative products in the chemical fertilizer industry chain, only monoammonium phosphate and ammonium chloride have not yet broken through the previous year's highs, other products have reached new highs, while the lows and average prices are generally higher than the previous year. This shows that the price center of fertilizer chain is moving upward, and the fluctuation of fluctuation is narrowing gradually.

From the point of view of specific products, the biggest increase this year is urea. Taking Shandong small particles as an example, the average price of January-July 2018 increased by 309 yuan/ton, or 19.02% compared with 2017; the second and third are ammonium chloride and synthetic ammonia, with average price increases of 14.62% and 12.98% respectively, and other products with average price increases of 7-12%.

The reasons for the general increase in fertilizer prices this year are the cost of raw materials in the upstream, such as the continuous increase in phosphate rocks, the direct cost of ammonium phosphate products, the normalization of environmental supervision, the increase in environmental investment, the limited start-up of the plant, such as urea plant operating rate this year more than 5-60%, supply and demand. The ease of the contradictions has helped the market; there has also been a depreciation of the renminbi, and export orders for some products have been buoyant, such as diammonium phosphate exports of 2.49 million tons in January-June 2018, up 9.9% from the same period last year.

At present, these factors still exist, and individual factors still have an aggravating trend, such as raw material costs, environmental protection, fertilizer chain support is not reduced, although the downstream demand is relatively weak, but the high price of fertilizer operation is still the main theme.