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Last amendment: Successor cycle: Russian government sets fertiliser export quota at 18.7 Mt for 1 December 2025 – 31 May 2026 (over 10.6 Mt nitrogen, over 8 Mt compound), continuing the recurring six-month pattern. on 2025-10-17.
Russia operates a recurring six-month tariff-quota / volumetric-cap regime over outbound shipments of nitrogen and compound mineral fertilisers, re-set semi-annually by Government Resolution. The mechanism has been continuously in force since late 2021 (introduced under Resolution 2068 of 3 November 2021, when domestic gas-price volatility threatened domestic urea supply) and has been rolled forward every six months since.
Resolution 1400 of 23 October 2024 fixes the December 2024 – May 2025 parameters at:
1. Volumetric cap. Approximately 19.2 Mt total: ~11.2 Mt nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulphate, UAN) and ~8 Mt compound fertilisers (NPK, NP, NPS, DAP, MAP). This represents a meaningful increase over the prior cycle (June – Nov 2024 cap of ~16.95 Mt) and the year-earlier H1 2024 cycle (~17 Mt). 2. Allocation. Quota volumes are distributed across exporters based on historical export shares over the prior 12 months, effectively locking in the established producer cohort — PhosAgro, EuroChem, Acron, Uralchem, Uralkali — and limiting new-entrant access during quota windows. 3. Out-of-quota treatment. Shipments above an exporter's allocated cap are blocked at customs (i.e. the cap is a hard volumetric ceiling, not a revenue duty), distinct from the floating-rate-plus-€100/t out-of-quota architecture that governs Russian grain exports.
Carve-outs from the quota include shipments to Eurasian Economic Union members (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan), specific humanitarian-aid lots authorised by separate government decisions, and certain pre-existing inter-governmental obligations.
Russia is structurally the world's largest exporter of mineral fertilisers in aggregate (Russia + Belarus collectively ~30-40% of global potash and ~20% of global nitrogen export trade). Together with the recurring grain export-quota architecture, the fertiliser quota is one of two principal Russian agricultural-trade instruments with global price-discovery implications:
caps during the Northern-Hemisphere planting-season window (Dec – May coincides with European spring-application demand) has historically widened the FOB-Baltic vs. Tampa nitrogen basis and propagated through to European nitrogen-fertiliser prices and farmer input cost.
marginal supplier to Brazil, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa; the 8-Mt compound sub-quota is calibrated to allow normal seasonal volumes while preserving domestic supply.
share of producer cost for many EM grain and oilseed crops; policy-driven swings in Russian fertiliser export availability flow into next-season EM food-CPI baskets via the planting-cost channel, layered on top of the direct grain-quota channel.
instrument complements the grain-export quota, the agricultural raw-material export bans (sulphur, sunflower-seed, etc.), and the pre-existing nitrogen and ammonia export floors as a domestic-supply-stabilisation toolkit. None of these are Western-sanctions retaliations; they pre-date 2022 in spirit and are best read as a structural agricultural-trade-policy layer that Russia uses irrespective of the geopolitical cycle.
2089)** — parallel agricultural export-licensing instrument; the grain and fertiliser quotas re-set on aligned six-month cycles and together define Russia's seasonal ag-trade posture.
counter-sanctions / domestic-supply regulatory cluster — the fertiliser quota is structurally adjacent but motivated by domestic price-stabilisation rather than counter-sanctions posture.
Canada (Nutrien); Belarusian potash export sanctions have left Uralkali and Belaruskali less constrained than peer Western capacity, indirectly raising the importance of any Russian cap on the segment for global potash availability.
Dec – May spring-planting window; modest supportive impact on global nitrogen-fertiliser availability vs a hypothetical lower cap.
Western sanctions pressure on adjacent goods classes.
(June – Nov 2025; Dec 2025 – May 2026 at 18.7 Mt) are filed as amendments rather than separate IPTM actions.
ag-export licensing decisions, alongside the grain-quota channel.
sub-quota in line with Russian gas-price normalisation and domestic urea capacity additions (Mendeleyevskazot, EuroChem Kingisepp expansions).
partially carved out and subject to a separate export-licensing layer; ongoing 2025 discussions on pipeline-ammonia exports through the Togliatti–Odessa pipeline (suspended since 2022) could re-introduce structural changes.
Customs-Tariff Regulation level that could disadvantage smaller exporters.
bans / duties continue to be re-set on aligned cycles.