By: Editorial Team, StoneX Media
Fertilizer manufacturing depends on a narrow set of global shipping lanes and pipelines to move nitrogen, phosphate and potash from producer to farm. The Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and Russia's shadow fleet routes are now all under strain at once, squeezing the supply lines that carry those products to fertilizer buyers everywhere. Each choke point touches a different part of the fertilizer complex, from natural gas feedstock to finished urea and phosphate cargoes. The result is a supply chain shaped as much by geopolitics as by the usual rhythm of harvests and planting.
Josh Linville is Vice President of Fertilizer at StoneX where he oversees and tracks international fertilizer trade flows. Linville's coverage spans the physical flows and trade routes that move nitrogen, phosphate and potash across global markets, including disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and along Russia's export lanes.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea have both come under threat at the same time, cutting into two of the corridors that carry natural gas, ammonia and finished urea to fertilizer buyers everywhere. Those disruptions are not abstract for fertilizer markets. "You talk about the Strait of Hormuz being closed, the Red Sea being threatened. Well, that means that we're losing urea," Linville said. As a result, the fertilizer complex now carries the same shipping risk as the crude oil and LNG cargoes moving through the same waters.
"Ukraine is doing such a good job of attacking Russian vessels. Now they're keeping it to the shadow fleet. They're not just indiscriminately going after boats anywhere out there, they're picking and choosing which ones go after." Ukraine's targeted strikes on Russia's shadow fleet raise the pressure on Russian export capacity, since Russia remains one of the largest suppliers across the entire fertilizer complex, including urea, anhydrous ammonia, phosphate and potash. Consequently, any pullback in Russian shipments would not stay isolated to one product; it would tighten supply across nitrogen, phosphate and potash markets at once. That risk compounds the pressure already building at the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, rather than offsetting it.
Nord Stream pipeline repairs remain one of the conditions that would need to fall into place before Europe's idled nitrogen capacity returns to the market. Roughly a quarter of Europe's nitrogen production has been sitting offline, a gap tied to the loss of the cheap Russian gas that once ran through that pipeline. Restoring those flows would not happen quickly, and Linville frames it as one piece of a broader chain of repairs, alongside a reopened Strait of Hormuz and an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, that would all need to fall into place before European nitrogen supply meaningfully recovers. According to Linville, "repairs start to be made to the Nord Stream pipeline, and Europe can start to think about restarting that 25% offline nitrogen production."
The fertilizer products most exposed to Middle East and Russian supply route disruption include urea, anhydrous ammonia, sulfur, natural gas and phosphate, all of which move through the same threatened corridors. "It means we're losing anhydrous, we're losing sulfur. We're losing gas. We're losing finished goods coming out of there. We're losing phosphate," is how Linville frames the scale of what is at risk if those routes stay disrupted.
Linville argues that fertilizer prices could fall quickly if the Strait of Hormuz reopened and the Russia-Ukraine war ended, since well sold manufacturers would suddenly face motivated sellers and fewer buyers holding out. He also argues the damage to fertilizer supply would outlast any single resolution, since the disruptions have been building since late February and would still leave the market tighter heading into the spring of 2027.
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--- Written by Gus Farrow, Senior Manager, StoneX Media
--- Expert: Josh Linville, StoneX VP of Fertilizer
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Fertilizer supply now depends on a handful of contested shipping lanes and pipelines stretching from the Middle East to Northern Europe. Here is how the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, Russia’s shadow fleet and the Nord Stream pipeline are reshaping where nitrogen, phosphate and potash actually move.
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