Recently, the continuously sluggish international potassium fertilizer market has finally begun to show signs of recovery. However, as demand recovers, international supply faces serious obstacles. On July 1st, 7500 dock workers at Canadian Pacific ports went on strike, disrupting the operations of two of Canada's three busiest ports - Vancouver Port and Prince Rupert Port - which are Canada's main gateway to natural resources and commodity exports, including potassium fertilizer, rapeseed, wood pulp, and sulfur.

As the world's largest producer and exporter of potassium fertilizer, Canada produces 95% of its potassium fertilizer for export, most of which passes through the Port of Vancouver. The strike is still ongoing to this day. Nutrien, the world's largest fertilizer producer, said on July 11 that its subsidiary, Canpotex, had reduced its output of Cory potash fertilizer mine in Saskatchewan due to the strike in Vancouver Port, which led to the decline of its terminal export capacity. According to industry organization Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, the strike has caused approximately 5.5 billion Canadian dollar in losses to date, with approximately 500 million Canadian dollar in daily trade disruptions.

At present, although North American farmers have already met the demand for fertilization for spring crops, demand in other markets is returning strongly. On the one hand, the strong demand of Brazil's second crop of corn season (Safra) has greatly increased the sales price of large grain potassium chloride in the region, boosting supplier sentiment. On the other hand, the market expects that the new Indian standard potassium chloride contract price will be announced soon, or within the fob range of 315-322 dollars, which will help the recovery of demand in Southeast Asia, and the shipment to India will also recover, enhancing market confidence. At the same time, discussions on the price of standard potassium chloride and standard potassium sulfate in the third quarter of Europe have also begun, which will help provide some guidance for the price of large particles of potassium chloride in the region. Moreover, supplementary activities for the US potassium fertilizer market will also begin in July.

The concentration of various strong demand times, while helping to stabilize potassium fertilizer prices, the market cannot help but worry about whether international potassium fertilizer supply can keep up with the ongoing impact of strikes. Therefore, the supply of international potassium fertilizer market in the later stage faces enormous uncertainty, and logistics issues may become a key factor driving up price increases.