Compound fertilizer from Saudi Arabia hit US$ 0.83 per kg in June 2026, 4% above May, but August rose to US$ 0.86 per kg and overtook that mark.
Compound fertilizer that Saudi Arabia sells to Brazil reached US$ 0.83 per kg in June 2026, the highest mark on this route up to that point. The previous record was from May: US$ 0.80 per kg, a gap of +4.0%. That June record did not last, because in August the price rose to US$ 0.86 per kg and overtook it. Here, the average price is FOB value (the goods before freight and insurance) divided by shipped weight, not a list price. Importing fertilizer is, in large part, buying crop cost: every cent per kilo gets multiplied across thousands of tons.
In June, the price was US$ 0.83 per kg, against US$ 0.80 in May. The mark applies to one specific combination: fertilizers with two or three nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), Saudi origin, import flow. Other routes for the same product can behave very differently. That is why the data compare the route only with itself, never with the whole market. Price per kilo is the cleanest measure in foreign trade, because total value swells or shrinks with the volume shipped. In June, volume also jumped: about 99.1 thousand tons, against 11.0 thousand in May.
July brought a pullback: the price fell to US$ 0.76 per kg, about 8% below June, with the largest volume in the series, around 160.8 thousand tons. August reversed the move and reached US$ 0.86 per kg, up 13% on July and 4.0% above the June record. So the June mark stopped being the route's high. August volume was smaller, at 43.0 thousand tons, but the monthly figure is partial for comparison with fully shipped months. In December 2025 and January 2026, the price sat near US$ 0.63 per kg, so the route now pays about 36% more than at the start of the series. Taken together, the sequence reads as a rise, a pullback and a new high, a pattern worth checking against product mix before assuming a single cause.
Official trade data from Brazil's development and industry ministry (MDIC) shows the price, not the cause. Three hypotheses make the list. The first is the cost of raw materials, such as natural gas, phosphate and potash. The second is freight and insurance, which sit outside FOB value but weigh on contract negotiations. The third is the shipment mix: compound fertilizer is not a single product, and a cargo with more nutrients per ton costs more per kilo even with no change in list prices. Exchange rates matter too, because quotes are in dollars while the farmer's bill closes in reais. Fertilizer is a recurring cost of every crop, and Brazil imports most of what it applies to its fields.
The central question is whether the price holds the August level or hands back part of the gain, as it did once in July. It also matters whether import volume from Saudi Arabia follows the price, which would indicate firm demand, or falls, which would indicate buyers pushing back. As we showed in Brazilian crude to Portugal hits all-time high price, a record price on one route does not always become a trend for the whole market. It pays to separate the price effect from the dollar effect: a rise in dollars is not always a rise in reais, and reais are what the grower uses to decide how much to apply per hectare.
The June record has been overtaken, and the route is still priced in dollars. Anyone who bought before May never paid more than US$ 0.80 per kg.
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