Later CRU and SMM analysis put China's full-year 2025 sulfuric acid exports near 4.65 million tonnes, up 73 percent year on year, a flood of seaborne acid that competed with elemental sulfur burners before the 2026 export halt reversed the flow. The CRU note is at https://www.crugroup.com/en/communities/thought-leadership/2026/chinas-export-halt-reinforces-bullish-sulphuric-acid-sentiment/.
Acid is sulfur units already burned. Four point six five million tonnes of exported acid is a substitute for elemental sulfur that overseas fertilizer and metals plants would otherwise burn. In 2025 that substitute was cheap enough, relative to rising elemental FOB, to grow 73 percent. In 2026 China moved from quotas to a near-total halt, with June acid exports near 980 tonnes.
The May 2025 desk item is the surge path, not the halt. Indonesian HPAL, African copper, and Asian fertilizer consumers who filled on Chinese acid in 2025 are the consumers who lost that book in 2026. CRU's 16 million tonne Indonesian nickel-related acid demand, with 1.0 million tonnes still imported in 2025, is one of those books.
Alberta recovered sulfur still leaves mainly through Vancouver as elemental solid, not as acid. A Chinese acid flood competes with Vancouver elemental into burners that can take either. A Chinese acid halt later forces those burners back onto elemental, including Canadian solid, or onto local acid plants such as ENC. 2025 is the competition year. 2026 is the reversal year.
SunSirs put 2025 Chinese elemental sulfur imports at 9.61 million tonnes, down 3.5 percent, average $274 per tonne, up 134 percent. China exported more acid and imported slightly less elemental, at a much higher elemental price. That is a country converting sulfur units into acid for export while paying up for the elemental it still needed for domestic phosphate.
The December 2025 association urge to halt phosphate fertilizer exports through August 2026 is the fertilizer-export half of the same food-security turn. Acid exports surged in 2025. Phosphate exports were asked to stop. 2026 stopped both acid and, via customs, mainstream MAP and DAP declarations. May 2025 still looks like the acid boom.
Tampa climbing from $116 per long ton in January toward $270 in early April, USGS, is the US molten print of a world in which Chinese acid was still flooding. The 2026 $705 Tampa print is the world in which that flood had stopped and Hormuz had closed. Two different acid-and-elemental balances.
Figures follow CRU and SMM. Licensed weekly grids are not restated.