The Fertilizer Institute's 2023 Industry Trends survey found broadly positive industry sentiment but flagged regulatory uncertainty and geopolitical risks among leading challenges. The PDF is at https://www.tfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/industry-trends-issu-final.pdf. The backdrop matches a sulfur market still digesting 2022 war and Chinese-policy shocks.
Sulfur is a recovered phosphate input, not a nitrogen product tied to natural gas. It still sits inside the fertilizer risk complex TFI surveys. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had disrupted Black Sea fertilizer logistics. China's October 2021 phosphate export inspections and July 2022 de-facto quota regime had destroyed then rerouted sulfur demand. 2023 sentiment that geopolitics remains a top theme is that memory, not a new Strait closure.
Alberta recovered sulfur still leaves mainly through Vancouver. Canadian molten rail into US phosphate plants is the other door. TFI's US membership is the Tampa contract's demand side. A survey that names geopolitics and regulation is a Florida and Gulf acid-plant read. It is not a licensed sulfur assessment.
Tampa's 2023 path from $90 per long ton at the open to $55 in mid-July to $102 in the fourth quarter, USGS, is the price those surveyed plants paid. Positive sentiment with a $55 mid-year trough is affordability, not scarcity. The 2022 $481 peak is the scar.
This desk note restates TFI's survey themes. It does not invent sulfur-specific survey percentages beyond what the cited PDF supports. Figures that belong in the sulfur file remain USGS Tampa, VFPA tonnes, and named trade-press FOB prints.