India's latest urea import tender has cleared at softer prices, a sign of relief on global fertiliser costs, Global Agriculture reports. The tender, issued by Indian Potash Limited (IPL) on 23 September for 1.7 million tonnes, 1 million tonnes for west coast ports and 700,000 tonnes for the east coast, was watched as a benchmark for fourth-quarter urea prices, because India is the world's largest fertiliser importer.
Prices have swung sharply this year. Fighting linked to the wider Iran conflict disrupted Middle Eastern gas and fertiliser supplies early in 2026 and briefly pushed India's urea import price as high as $959 a tonne in April. As supplies eased and Chinese exporters returned, prices fell: a June tender settled near $445 to $449 a tonne and an August tender, with heavy Chinese participation, at roughly $390 to $394. By late September world benchmarks had begun to rise again.
The timing matters for Indian farmers, who are preparing to sow wheat, rapeseed and chickpea. These crops need nitrogen from urea at sowing and early growth, so demand will rise through November and December whatever the price.
India sells urea to farmers at a fixed, heavily subsidised price and the government absorbs the difference, so cheaper imports could ease the subsidy bill. Trade sources cautioned that relief from lower import prices usually takes a full cropping season to show.
Because India's tender results act as an informal world benchmark, the report says fertiliser companies such as Nutrien, Mosaic and Yara, and large buyers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Turkey, usually adjust their price expectations to how India's tenders clear. For Brazil, where urea demand follows the second-crop (safrinha) corn window, easier nitrogen prices would offset high input costs.
Photo: SuSanA Secretariat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Source: Global Agriculture
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