Edition Tag: Sulphur 2025-01-31

The start of a new year is a traditional time to take stock of the previous 12 months and look ahead to the next. In this regard, CRU’s most recent annual client survey, conducted at the end of December last year, makes interesting reading as to your own concerns for 2025 and beyond. There were numerous responses across commodity and financial sectors, and broadly based worldwide, if slightly skewed towards Europe and North America, but across all of these the key worry for the coming year clearly emerged as trade tariffs and protectionism. This is perhaps unsurprising, given incoming US president Donald Trump’s avowed intent to impose blanket 20% tariffs on all goods entering the US, and up to 60% on China. While most clients did not think tariffs would rise as much as some of Trump’s rhetoric might suggest, most expect rises of 5-10% across the board, and Asian businesses are most concerned. CRU’s most recent position paper on US tariffs highlights some of the internal political and legal challenges in implementing these, but does acknowledge that some rises will be inevitable, and may well produce the kind of reciprocal measures last seen in the previous Trump administration’s trade war with China and the EU in 2018.

Sulphur and sulphuric acid marketer Aglobis has signed a memorandum of understanding with logistics services company Rhenus to develop a sulphur remelter plant at Rhenus’s Terminal 4 in the river Rhine port of Duisburg, operated by Rhenus Port Logistics Rhein-Ruhr. Aglobis says that the development is a result of changing sulphur supply in Europe. Declining production from refineries and sour gas is leading to less liquid sulphur availability and greater imports of solid sulphur from overseas.

Global sulphur prices were mostly assessed flat in mid-January, with only slight changes for China, Indonesia and India, while the first quarter contracts for the Middle East, North Africa and Tampa increased from the previous quarter. Overall, the number of transactions taking place globally has declined as subdued demand has limited trading activity in most delivered markets. The current sulphur price environment has been shaped by the combination of rising Chinese demand and higher Middle East f.o.b. prices in the second half of last year. As a result, some consumer markets such as Indonesia and India have been subject to upward pressure in order to remain attractive destinations. But demand remained lacklustre across delivered markets, leaving prices relatively stable.

New concepts focused on the transfer and combination of existing sulphur and sulphuric acid technologies to support decarbonisation of the sulphuric acid industry are being investigated. In this article three research projects are discussed: sulphur dioxide depolarised electrolysis for green regeneration of spent acid, use of renewable heat and catalyst to the splitting process from sulphuric acid to SO2 for reduction of fossil fuel consumption, and sulphur as an energy vector.

ICL has announced that Raviv Zoller , the company’s president and CEO for the past seven years, is expected to leave the company in early 2025, following both the appointment of a replacement and a formal transition.

Nickel sulphate is an intermediate step in the production of materials for batteries, and is seeing rapid demand growth as the auto industry moves towards electric power trains.

The 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction goals in the European Union are driving oil and gas producers to reduce CO2 emissions wherever possible. This extends to even the incinerator attached to a sulphur recovery unit (SRU). In this article Sulphur Experts review the role of the incinerator, how the three most common European TGUs each affect the demand on the incinerator itself, and the potential reduction in CO2 emissions for a generic facility of each type.

Although China remains the world’s largest phosphate producer, it has been overtaken as the largest exporter by Morocco in recent years as domestic producers face continuing restrictions on exports.

Chile’s environmental regulator SMA has filed a charge against state-owned Codelco, alleging emission violations at its Potrerillos copper smelter in the Atacama region of northern Chile. An audit showed the company had not implemented a monitoring system for sulphur dioxide emissions and other procedures in accordance with environmental standards for the plant, Reuters news agency reported. The SMA labelled the charge as serious, which could lead to a fine of around $4.1 million, and possible revocation of the environmental permit or closure. Codelco had ten days to submit a compliance plan, and 15 days to present a defence.

A complete listing of all articles and news items that appeared in Sulphur magazine during 2024.