Division 05
Fertilisers & Nutrients
Plant and animal nutrition, and the sulphur that most of it is built from. A division where almost nothing is decided by the analysis — the constraints are security law, product safety, carriage classification and, since January 2026, carbon at the border.
The division
Nutrient content is the number everyone quotes. It is almost never the reason a deal fails.
Urea is 46 % nitrogen. DAP is 18-46-0. MOP is 60–62 % K₂O. Nobody in this market gets those wrong and no cargo is ever lost over them. What loses cargoes is everything the certificate of analysis does not mention.
Who may lawfully receive ammonium nitrate, and whether you can evidence it. Whether a formulation has been tested and shown not to sustain a decomposition front through a ship's hold. Whether the sulphur you were quoted is formed product or crushed lump, because one is an ordinary cargo and the other is a dangerous good. How much cadmium arrived with the phosphorus, expressed per unit of nutrient so that blending cannot rescue it. Whether a blend will still be a blend by the time it reaches the field. Whether a feed additive is authorised for the species it is going to. And whether the product carries a carbon cost at the EU border — which for nitrogen and ammoniated phosphates it now does, and for potash it does not.
So each page below is organised around the constraint that actually binds that product, and the specification tables are there to support the argument rather than to be the argument.
The slate
Seven desks, seven different binding constraints.
Nitrogen Fertilisers
Urea, AN, CAN, ammonium sulphate, UAN and ammonia. Three regimes decide the trade before the analysis does: the explosives-precursor threshold at 16 % nitrogen, the detonation resistance test, and CBAM.
Automotive Urea
AUS 32 to ISO 22241 — AdBlue® and DEF. A fertiliser molecule sold to a fine-chemical tolerance, because the metals that poison an SCR catalyst are limited in milligrams per kilogram and the damage does not reverse.
Sulphur
Granular, prilled, pastille, slate, crushed lump and molten. An involuntary by-product whose supply cannot answer the price — and where the form, not the purity, decides whether it is a dangerous good.
Phosphate Fertilisers
DAP, MAP, TSP and SSP. Specified on available and water-soluble P₂O₅ rather than total, with a cadmium limit per unit of nutrient that blending cannot defeat.
Potash
MOP and SOP in standard, granular, coarse and soluble grades. The buying decision is the chloride the crop will tolerate; the second is a particle size that has to match the blend.
NPK & Complex Fertilisers
Blends and chemically granulated compounds. A blend that passes every analysis can still deliver the wrong ratio to the field, because segregation is invisible to a composite sample.
Feed Additives
Feed phosphates, feed-grade urea, amino acids, vitamins and premixes. The only book we run where the certificate of analysis is close to irrelevant — the question is whether the substance is authorised for that species.
Crop chemicals
Magnesium chlorate defoliant for cotton ahead of mechanical harvest. Supplied against destination registration and end-use declaration; not a page of its own, and we would rather say so than pad the slate.
Border carbon
CBAM runs through the middle of this division, not around it.
Since 1 January 2026 the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism has been a financial obligation rather than a reporting exercise, and it divides this slate in a way that has nothing to do with agronomy.
Inside: ammonia and nitric acid, urea above 45 % N, ammonium sulphate, AN and CAN, sodium and potassium nitrate, UAN, and mixed fertilisers containing nitrogen — which includes DAP and MAP and nitrogen-bearing NPK, because they classify in CN 3105.
Outside: TSP and SSP, which carry no nitrogen and classify as superphosphates in CN 3103; PK fertilisers under CN 3105 60 00, which is explicitly carved out; straight potash; and phosphate rock.
The practical consequence is that two products a buyer treats as substitutes — DAP and TSP, both bought for phosphate — now have different landed costs into the EU, and importing a finished compound is no longer economically equivalent to importing the straights and blending in Europe. We supply the producer's verified embedded emissions data and the classification per consignment. The declarant obligation belongs to the importer, and we will not represent otherwise in a contract.
Across the division
The three things that do not change by product.
Regulated lines are screened first
Ammonium nitrate, ammonia and anything carrying a precursor, licensing or authorisation regime. End use, destination and the buyer's entitlement are established before we quote, and an enquiry that fails that ends with us rather than being redirected — see Compliance.
Carriage classification before fixture
Whether a sulphur cargo is Group B or C, whether an AN-based formulation travels under UN 2067, UN 2071 or as non-hazardous, and what the previous cargo was. These are safety determinations that happen to have commercial consequences, and they are settled before a vessel is nominated.
Independent determination, every cargo
An agency is appointed for the consignment — SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek — instructed jointly, with sampling under supervision and sealed retained samples held for the claim period. We do not accept a seller's own analysis as governing and we do not ask a buyer to accept ours.
Related
Where this division touches the others.
- Apatite concentrate
- The rock the phosphate slate is made from, under Metals & Minerals. Its cadmium content is decided by geology and is inherited by every finished phosphate downstream.
- Sulphur into chemicals
- About half of world sulphur demand becomes sulphuric acid for phosphate, but the rest goes to metal leaching and industrial chemistry — which is why sulphur is also listed under Chemicals.
- Agriculture
- The food and feed side — grains, oilseeds, sugar, coffee, cocoa and cotton, edible oils and dairy. A separate division, on trade association contracts, with a separate set of arguments.
- Automotive urea and diesel
- AUS 32 is a fertiliser derivative that serves an emissions system rather than a crop. It sits here because of what it is made from, and relates to diesel because of what it is used with.
Technical Library
Specifications are released, not published.
Grade tables, contaminant schedules, blending compatibility notes and product datasheets sit behind an identified request.
This is deliberate. A published specification reads as a standing offer, dates the moment a producer changes, and gives a counterparty grounds to hold us to a figure we never quoted. Contaminant limits in particular are amended regularly, and a stale table on a website is worse than none. Tell us what you are evaluating and we will send the current document.
Enquiries
Every enquiry is answered by the desk that handles it.
Send the product, quantity, delivery basis, destination and timing. We revert with availability, an indication and the documentation that accompanies it. Specifications are released once we know who we are speaking with.