Vancouver Fraser Port Authority statistics show fertilizer cargo through the Port of Vancouver at 14.0 million tonnes in 2025, up 21 percent year on year, including potash at a record 10.5 million tonnes, up 28 percent, and sulphur at 3.5 million tonnes, up 5 percent. Total port cargo hit a record 170.4 million tonnes, up 8 percent. The later 2023-2025 Statistics Overview PDF confirms sulphur at 3,507,428 metric tonnes.
Destination markets for fertilizer included Brazil, China, and Indonesia. The sulphur destination table in the same overview put China at 1.30 million tonnes, down 16 percent, Australia 597,000 tonnes, Indonesia 371,000 tonnes, and the United States 302,000 tonnes, up 191 percent. China remained the largest listed sulphur trading economy and a smaller share of a larger stem.
The five-year VFPA sulphur ladder is 2.29 million tonnes in 2021, 2.79 million in 2022, 3.10 million in 2023, 3.35 million in 2024, and 3.51 million in 2025. That verified_public series is the cleanest open measure of Canadian Pacific solid sulfur growth. It does not include molten rail south of the 49th parallel.
Alberta recovered sulfur still leaves mainly through this stem. Forming plants in the Edmonton and Fort McMurray belts rail formed product to Vancouver and Port Moody. Argus, citing AER, put provincial sulfur inventory at 11.66 million tonnes in July 2025, the lowest since May 2019. The 3.51 million tonne port year is the loadout side of that draw.
Argus put the January-July Vancouver FOB average at $238 per tonne, more than triple the $78 per tonne average a year earlier, clearing the export-process cost hurdle often cited above $150 per tonne. Early October FOB was assessed at $305-310 per tonne. USGS MCS 2026 later estimated average US elemental sulfur unit value at about $180 per tonne in 2025 versus $46.42 in 2024, with Tampa from $116 per long ton at the year open to $310 in early October.
CRU described 2025 as a structural tightening year, a global deficit near 1.9 million tonnes. Vancouver's 5 percent sulphur increase is modest next to potash's 28 percent, and it is the sulfur that phosphate and metals actually burn. A stem that can grow while drawing Alberta block is a stem that has remelt, rail, and loaders working.
Brazil's January-August receipts of 122,842 tonnes from Vancouver, nearly threefold the prior-year pace, show the Atlantic diversion that tariff talk and Gulf economics encouraged. Indonesia slipped in the January-July window even as CRU put nickel-related Indonesian acid demand near 16 million tonnes a year. Destination mix, not only the 3.5 million tonne headline, is the 2025 story.
China's 2025 sulfur imports, per SunSirs, were 9.6084 million tonnes, down 3.46 percent, average price $274.02 per tonne, up 134 percent. December Chinese imports fell to 422,400 tonnes as high overseas prices and phosphate-export pauses chilled buying. Vancouver's China line down 16 percent is that chill in a Pacific harbour.
The PDF is at https://www.portvancouver.com/sites/default/files/2026-03/2025%20Statistics%20overview%20%28En%29.pdf. Figures follow VFPA. Licensed weekly assessment grids are not redistributed.