A letter on the sulphur nobody priced
The market spent the back half of last month selling the Hormuz spike as if the tankers had merely been delayed. Crude came off the boil, the screens calmed, and everyone congratulated themselves for not panicking. Then confirmed flow through the strait collapsed to about 4 million barrels a day on a ten-day average, down from roughly 15 in late June, with Aramco facilities taking missile fire and the Houthis talking up a maritime blockade. The calm now looks less like relief and more like inattention.
Oil is the headline. Sulphur is the story that actually moves fertilizer and metal. More than 90% of the sulphur imported into Africa comes out of the Gulf and passes through Hormuz, and almost all of it ends up as sulphuric acid: for phosphate and nitrogen plants that feed people, and for the leach circuits that pull copper and cobalt out of the Copperbelt. Around half of all seaborne sulphur crosses that single chokepoint. Traders were already struggling to source cargoes during the earlier squeeze, and the tone from the acid desks this week has gone from nervous to grim.
Where it bites
You can already read the damage in the majors. Mosaic spent the last round curtailing fertilizer production over the shortage, idling two US plants and scaling back in Brazil. China's own numbers tell the same story from the demand side: sulphur imports plunged year on year as the Saudi, UAE, Qatar and Kuwaiti share of its intake fell from 35% toward 20%. When acid gets scarce and dear, the plants that make DAP and the operations that leach oxide ore both start doing arithmetic about which tonnes are worth running. That arithmetic reaches the DRC and Zambia faster than most people think.
Phosphate keeps consolidating
Into that tension, the phosphate world tightens its own grip. Koch Ag and Energy Solutions and Morocco's OCP have agreed a new joint venture, deepening a partnership that already ties American distribution to the largest phosphate rock reserves on the planet. Meanwhile Washington's fresh round of tariffs on Canada carved out fertilizers entirely, a quiet admission that American farms cannot be taxed off their potash and nitrogen. Supply keeps concentrating in fewer, larger hands, which is worth remembering every time someone calls the nutrient trade a commodity business.
The Copperbelt, between a discovery and an election
Zambia offers the brighter counterweight, if the politics hold. Midnight Sun's Dumbwa soil anomaly now runs over 20 kilometres, defined by thousands of First Quantum and Anglo American samples, with values reaching 7,300 ppm copper that the company claims exceeds nearby mined grade. KoBold Metals has broken ground at Mingomba near Chililabombwe, one of the highest-grade undeveloped copper deposits anywhere. The shadow over all of it is the campaign season: suspected UPND cadres smashed seven opposition vehicles in Kitwe, and opposition figures are openly forecasting a change of government next month. Corridors run on stability as much as on grade.