Weekly Summary: Large-particle urea demand in Northeast China drove market pricing, while transaction activity in other regions cooled significantly amid rising prices.

Production Rates: This period saw an average daily urea output of 207,100 tons nationwide, with an operating rate of approximately 85.34%. Coal-based urea plants operated at 87.51%, while natural gas and coke oven gas-based plants operated at 77.36%. Nationwide urea plant operating rates decreased by 0.5 percentage points compared to the previous period. Coal-based plants saw a 1.57 percentage point decline, while gas-based plants recorded a 3.47 percentage point increase.

Upstream Plant Inventories: Fertilizer Easy Access data shows national urea plant inventories stood at 1.4087 million tons on November 18, down 70,100 tons from the previous week.

This week, urea prices remained strong. Large-particle urea saw significant gains with robust transactions, while small and medium-particle urea experienced modest increases but weaker transaction activity. The primary reason was bulk procurement in the Northeast region drawing large-particle supply from Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and even Henan. Meanwhile, small-particle urea demand in the Northeast was primarily met by Wulan inventory. Consequently, the tightness of large and small-particle urea varied across these regions, with distinctly different trend continuities. Outside Northeast China, demand growth primarily stemmed from state reserve enterprises releasing stockpiles, limiting their capacity to drive price increases.

Internationally, this week saw a resurgence of trading on US dollar liquidity tightening, which exerted significant downward pressure on global financial markets in the latter half of the week. Trading on US dollar liquidity is expected to remain the main theme in international financial markets going forward. Returning to urea, the Indian tender had negligible impact on the domestic market. Downstream enterprises, having completed bulk purchases this week, have temporarily paused short-term demand. Barring new policy disruptions, the market is expected to trend weaker.

The international urea market remained largely subdued, with all parties closely monitoring India's tender outcome, which ultimately settled slightly below expectations. Following the White House's exemption of reciprocal nitrogen fertilizer tariffs effective April, U.S. barge prices initially declined but gradually rebounded during the week.