The global agricultural economy rebounds slowly and fertilizer demand remains stable in the future.

The global economy began to pick up in the second half of 2013, and the average growth rate of global production capacity is expected to reach 4%. Uncertainties include fiscal and debt adjustment in developed countries, the risk of deflation, and political tensions in the Middle East and Ukraine. On the whole, favorable climatic conditions and the development of agricultural science and technology in 2014 have led to a sustained increase in global food prices. The output of grain, grain and oil increased steadily. At present, all regions in the world advocate the implementation of multi-element fertilizers, and new fertilizers are developing rapidly to meet the needs of modern agriculture. According to the Fertilizer Outlook 2014-2018 released by IFA in June 2014, global fertilizer demand will pick up steadily from 2014 to 2015. Global fertilizer consumption is expected to increase by 3.1% in 2014, and nitrogen demand will increase by 3.1% to 1.1221 tons. Phosphate demand rebounded slightly by 1.4% to 41.7 million tons, while potash trade increased by 5.3% to 30.2 million tons. With the exception of Oceania, fertilizer use will increase in all regions of the world, with accelerated demand growth in North America, Latin America and Africa, more than 3% growth in South and East Asia, and global fertilizer demand is expected to reach 200 million tons by 2018. From the perspective of fertilizer varieties, in the next five years, the demand for nitrogen fertilizer will gradually slow down, and the demand for phosphate and potash fertilizer will continue to grow.

New characteristics of fertilizer development in the future

The input and use of new capacity will have a positive impact on the world fertilizer economy. In the next five years, nearly 200 expansion projects will be put into production. It is estimated that the global capacity of fertilizer products and raw materials will increase by 146 million tons, an increase of nearly 13% over 2013. In addition to new projects, the future development of fertilizers will be characterized by the process of combining imported raw materials with demand areas. At present, export areas and import areas have shown obvious polarization, the optimization of logistics and the use of resources are guiding the fertilizer industry to vertical and horizontal combination, so as to achieve global resource sharing.

The direction of fertilizer development is also affected by policies and subsidies, such as fertilizer subsidy policies and nutrient management mechanisms in South Asia and Africa. In the next five years, the fertilizer subsidy mechanism in India will shift to balanced fertilization, and more countries in Africa and other places will implement fertilizer subsidy policies. Effective and efficient fertilization has become the goal of fertilizer policy in more and more countries, which will change the supply pattern of fertilizer in the future.

The demand for nitrogen fertilizer weakens and phosphorus and potassium keep growing.

At the recent IFA Fertilizer production and International Trade Conference, experts predicted that synthetic ammonia would increase by 16% over 2013 to 245 million tons in 2018, with new capacity concentrated in East Asia (China, Indonesia), Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria), the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran) and Latin America. It is estimated that in the next five years, global urea capacity will increase by 41 million tons to 245 million tons, of which East Asia has the fastest growth rate of 35%, followed by Africa and North America. The demand for urea will reach 203 million tons in 2018, and the demand for urea in East Asia, South Asia and Latin America will continue to grow. The growth of supply and the stability of demand will lead to an increase in surplus. Countries also advocate reducing the use of urea and increasing the proportion of multi-element fertilizers.

The global phosphate rock will increase by 18% over 2013 to 258 million tons in 2018, and the phosphate fertilizer production capacity will reach 52 million tons in 2018, with a demand of 47.71 million tons, which belongs to steady development. In the next five years, about 22 new capacity will be put into production, including seven in China.

Potash capacity is expected to increase from 50 million tons in 2013 to 60.7 million tons in 2018, mainly in Canada and Russia. The growth rate of potash demand was 3 per cent from 2013 to 2018, and the surplus began to increase in 2017. In the next five years, the excess capacity of potash will be stable, with a surplus of about 10 million tons and expanding to 11.5 million tons in 2018.