The US ammonia market was firm with demand pushing August prices higher, sources said during the week ended on 29 July.
In Tampa, Yara agreed to an August price with its buyers at $560/tonne CFR, up by $5/tonne from July because of firm Yuzhny prices and strong demand from the phosphates sector. The settlement was in line with expectations of a rollover to an increase of up to $10/tonne.
There is continued demand for September ammonia deliveries to the US Gulf, with reports of buyers looking for spot cargoes, but no deals have been reported.
In the Midwest, dealers have started taking delivery of ammonia, positioning product for fall application as orders come in from growers. However, some are still waiting on the sidelines, reluctant to fill at current prices and waiting to order nearer to application time. There are reports of purchases already taking place for spring 2012 application.
The average retail price is reported in the $800-850/short ton ex-dealer range for fall application.
Some crop analysts have doubts about the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) corn crop yield prediction of 13.47bn bushels. Analyst yield ideas range from 12.87bn-13.5bn bushels.
There are expectations that somewhere between 400,000 to 2m acres of corn were lost to flooding this year, and that the USDA will lower its acreage figure of 92.3m to 91.8m, sources said.
In Trinidad, MHTL began a turnaround on 25 July on the urea/melamine lines of its AUM facility in Point Lisas. The units are expected to be down for around 30 days, adding around 55,000 tonnes of ammonia to the market. Production is expected to restart during the week of 22 August. There is talk of intermittent gas curtailments to ammonia plants in Trinidad continuing through August.
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This week on ICIS ( www.icisnews.com ):
28/07/2011 18:03 US Bunge looks for strong second half on biofuels, fertilizers
28/07/2011 13:49 US Bunge Q2 net income plummets to $316m, sales up 32%
28/07/2011 13:11 PotashCorp’s Q2 net income soars 75% to $840m, sales up 62%
28/07/2011 13:00 Acron Group releases 1H 2011 operating results
27/07/2011 13:00 Belneftekhim invests in development programme
