No CBAM Suspension for Fertilisers: What Importers Actually Pay Per Tonne of Urea

Fertiliser is the CBAM sector with the loudest political pressure. Farm groups have called for a suspension, and supply has been disrupted: ammonia and urea blocked in the Strait of Hormuz represent about one-third of global supply, as RTE reported. Yet the Commission has held its line.

What the Commission said

Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen put it plainly: "The commission has, for the moment, no plans to exempt fertilizers from the CBAM." His reasoning is that suspension "risks, again, worsening our dependency on imports." Instead, the Commission has pointed to using carbon revenues to support farmer price stability and a longer-term shift towards organic alternatives (RTE).

For importers, the planning assumption is therefore simple: CBAM applies to your fertiliser imports, and the first declaration is due by 30 September 2027.

What does it actually cost?

Analysis by Sandbag uses an Egyptian urea example to show how much the data source matters:

• Default values: about €41.96 per tonne of urea.
• Actual data, average-efficiency integrated plant: about €16.19 per tonne.
• Actual data, high-efficiency installation: about €7.39 per tonne.

That is a spread of more than five times between the worst and best case, for the same product from the same country. Sandbag also concludes that the expected CBAM-related fertiliser price increase in the early years is limited, roughly €1.4 per tonne of urea assuming 80% cost pass-through by EU producers, because EU plants usually set the marginal price.

Note these figures are illustrative and were calculated at an earlier certificate price. The Q3 2026 price is €82.32, so treat them as relative, not absolute.

What importers should do

1. Ask suppliers for verified, installation-level emissions data. Default values carry a mark-up that rises each year, so relying on them gets more expensive over time.
2. Segment your supplier base by efficiency. The spread above means two urea suppliers can differ in CBAM cost by tens of euros per tonne.
3. Stop waiting for a political fix. A suspension is not on the table, so build the data pipeline now.

The takeaway

The headline risk for fertiliser buyers is not the CBAM line itself but the combination of supply shocks and weak data. Importers who secure actual emissions data convert an unpredictable default-value penalty into a manageable cost.

Sources: RTE, Sandbag.