LONDON (ICIS)--After three weeks of insignificant or no trades in the urea market, North African urea producers placed more than 300,000 tonnes with traders in the span of a few days but this spurt of activity is yet to translate to other regions. Most deals for larger volumes this week were concluded at a discount with only the smaller lots from Egypt sold at higher levels. Egypt sold over 200,000 tonnes of granular and prilled urea this week while Algeria did more than 100,000 tonnes. While most of the buying is likely to cover short positions into Europe/Turkey, long positions are also being built in anticipation of spring demand from the continent. Otherwise, when AG [Arab Gulf] comes in to place February tonnes they will have to price aggressively,” said the trader.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 26, 2018 11:15 UTC