SunSirs customs summary put China's 2025 sulfur imports at 9.6084 million tonnes, down 3.46 percent year on year, with average import price $274.02 per tonne, up 134 percent. The item is at https://www.sunsirs.com/uk/detail_news-30339.html. July peaked at 1.094 million tonnes. December fell to 422,400 tonnes as high overseas prices and phosphate-export pauses chilled buying.
A 9.61 million tonne year is still a huge import book, later cited by SMM as about 45 percent import dependence with a large Middle East share. A 3.5 percent volume decline with a 134 percent price increase is the 2025 tightening in a Chinese customs table. Volume barely slipped. Unit value more than doubled.
December's 422,400 tonnes is the association-urge month. Bloomberg on 12 December reported Chinese fertilizer groups asking majors to halt phosphate exports through August 2026. High overseas prices plus that pause explain a December that is less than half of July's peak. The 2026 first-half collapse to 2.26 million tonnes, down 57.7 percent, starts from this December chill.
Alberta recovered sulfur still leaves mainly through the Vancouver stem. VFPA's 2025 China sulphur line was 1.30 million tonnes, down 16 percent. Canada's share of a 9.61 million tonne Chinese book is real and secondary to Middle East origins. When that book shrinks and Gulf-4 share later halves, Canada, Oman, and South Korea take mix, not 2025's volume.
USGS MCS 2026 put Tampa from $116 per long ton in January to $310 in early October. Vancouver FOB printed $305-310 on 2 October in Argus open news. China CFR into the low $520s at year-end in CRU and BC Insight commentary is the delivered idea behind SunSirs' $274 average, which is a full-year mean that includes cheaper first-half cargoes.
CRU's 1.9 million tonne global deficit estimate for 2025 is consistent with a Chinese import year that paid 134 percent more for 3.5 percent fewer tonnes. Phosphate plants that paid those prices in July at 1.094 million tonnes are the plants that paused in December at 422,400. Affordability, not a missing Chinese Claus industry, is the December print.
Indonesia's nickel-related acid demand near 16 million tonnes a year, in CRU's later summary, is the other Asian bid. Vancouver's January-July Indonesia receipts slipped 23 percent even so. China at 9.61 million tonnes remains the swing destination that sets whether Alberta forming plants are running for one tender calendar or several.
World output at 84 million tonnes in MCS 2026 did not collapse. Tradeable sulfur into China did reprice. The $274 average is that reprice. Licensed weekly grids are not restated.
Figures follow SunSirs' 2025 customs summary.