CryptoCoinHans 🍸🦩💛

India just had to buy a RARE cargo of sulfuric acid from Bulgaria, because China stopped selling... Beijing shut its sulfuric acid exports in May and then halted refined fuel exports in October, and outside the fertiliser and mining trade almost nobody noticed. Why does a boring industrial chemical matter? Because sulfuric acid is what turns phosphate rock into fertiliser. India goes through more than 20,000,000 tonnes a year, a lot of plants carry only 1 to 2 weeks of stock, and about a third of the world's sulfur comes out of Middle East oil and gas plants that have to ship through Hormuz. So China saw the same Hormuz crisis as everyone else and kept its acid at home for its own farms and copper smelters. No sanctions, ZERO shots fired. And the shortage gets pushed onto the rest of Asia, with India, China's biggest rival in the region, near the front of that queue... Now India pays more and goes the long way round. Out of Bulgaria, across a Black Sea where civilian ships are getting hit by naval drones, through the Bosphorus, down Suez and into a Red Sea well within Houthi range. And the timing is bad for New Delhi. That acid goes into DAP fertiliser in the middle of the winter (rabi) sowing season, the cost shows up in food prices about a season later, and Indian governments have lost elections over the price of onions before. I will be tracking Indian DAP prices into the new year, that is where this shows up first. SIGNAL, not noise!