Green ammonia is easier to make than to sell

In June 2026, S&P Global counted 328 million tonnes of announced low-carbon ammonia capacity. Twenty million qualify as likely to be built. Only 10.8 million have a final investment decision. Ninety-seven of every hundred announced tonnes exist, for now, on paper. Technology is not the reason: electrolysis works, and the Haber-Bosch process has been in use since 1913. Something else is holding back 300 million tonnes.

The few deals that did close show what that something is.

The deals that closed

The pattern repeats. Bankability was manufactured before the first tonne could move, and even a state buyer at EUR 1,000 per tonne has not yet finished the Egyptian financing.

Now leave the megaprojects behind. This is where the fertilizer industry lives.

Where ammonia actually goes (S&P Global, June 2026)

The first low-carbon tonnes are going into fertilizer production chains, not into bunker fuel. Moving them are hundreds of mid-sized producers, importers and distributors, and none of them has an Air Products or a Hintco behind the contract.

And their problem arrived on 1 January 2026. CBAM’s definitive regime now prices the carbon in every mineral nitrogen product crossing the EU border: ammonia, urea, ammonium nitrate, UAN, CAN, and the nitrogen-bearing blends. An importer of CBAM goods above 50 tonnes per year needs authorized declarant status, verified embedded emissions (direct and indirect), and certificates priced off the EU ETS. The cost climbs every year to 2034 as the EU free allocation phases out: S&P Global has modeled the curves product by product. A low-carbon tonne escapes the invoice only if verified actual emissions, not default values, are set in its certificate bill. A renewable premium raises the bar again. RFNBO status requires additionality, temporal and geographical correlation, a lifecycle saving of at least 70 percent, and a Proof of Sustainability that survives audit. The compliance risk sits with the buyer: when the paper fails, the European importer is the one out of position.

Nobody pays USD 1,090 for a molecule quoted at 490. The premium buys a compliance instrument: a cargo whose paper trail survives a verifier, a credit committee, a CBAM declaration, and an RFNBO audit. In this market, the paperwork is not attached to the product. It is the product.

Here, the standard answer, “sell it to a trader”, stops working. A trader takes title and runs a position. That puts one more balance sheet between producer and buyer, one more transfer for the chain of custody to certify, one more counterparty for a bank to underwrite. Margin drifts to the middle. And here is the question the best producers ask first: if the trader carries the price risk, is the whole risk not off my desk? It is not. Commodity and price risk never leave the producer. A trader does not remove it. The trader prices the risk into a discount that the producer never sees and pays on every tonne, forever. And the producer loses sight of its end customer, just when a named long-term buyer is what makes the next expansion financeable. The megaproject cure, handing everything to one buyer for 30 years, is not on offer at this scale and is the most expensive market access there is anyway.

The uncomfortable part: every piece of the missing structure already exists.

What already sits between producer and market

Very little of that capital has ever been shown to be a bankable green fertilizer file. Routing across independent terminals and second-tier operators cuts freight and storage costs and adds optionality that lenders price. And the concentrated mid-market of importers has hardly been offered a compliant low-carbon tonne with the paper done. The market is not short of capital, tanks, or buyers. It is short of an assembler.

The instrument for that job is older than the Haber-Bosch process and has moved metals and grain for two centuries without once taking a position: the commission agent. In the classical continental form, the agent contracts in its own name but for the producer’s account and in the producer’s interest. Title passes straight from producer to buyer. The agent holds no position, carries no price or commodity risk, and charges a fixed fee only when a tonne is placed, not a spread buried in the price. What it brings is the map above and the file that activates it: the lender shortlist, the terminal routing, the CBAM and RFNBO paperwork, and the offtake structure a credit committee will accept. The goods never change hands in the middle, so the chain of custody stays one link shorter. Customer, margin, and relationship stay with the producer.

The megaproject tier will be taken by states, sovereign funds, and single dominant buyers. The fertilizer tier below it is still unclaimed. The capitals are formed in Zurich, Geneva, Frankfurt, and London. The tanks are being built. The buyers are waiting for a compliant tonne. Whoever assembles this puzzle first takes the premium ahead of the rest and the market with it. Producers will not manage this alone. With commission agents, they will.

About the Author: Sergey Belskiy is the founder and managing director of Metal Supply Experts GmbH, a Swiss commission agent based in Zug, with 30+ years in cross-border commodity supply chains across metals, minerals, and energy commodities.