Prilled urea and granular urea are the same chemical and two different cargoes. The form changes particle size, dust, caking, how a spreader throws the product, and how a melt plant feeds it. A trader who switches form in the middle of a deal has substituted the goods. NAGTAR treats the form as part of the product on urea. Bulk stems, holds and the papers to lock before price are in importing bulk urea.
Urea (urée) is a nitrogen fertilizer and an industrial feedstock. It is not a cement raw material. It can sit in the same trading book as clinker or minerals. It is specified, stored and shipped as urea.
Buyers often ask about urea around the 46 percent nitrogen market grade. That phrase is how the fertilizer market names the ordinary product. It is not an assay of a lot, and NAGTAR does not publish a standing nitrogen figure. Whatever is agreed is confirmed on the qualified cargo.
What buyers mean by prilled and granular
Prills are made by spraying molten urea at the top of a tower and letting the droplets solidify as they fall through air. The particles are small and fairly round. Granules are made in a granulator, often a drum or a fluid bed, where the particle is built up to a larger size. The two plants, where they exist, are different machines. NAGTAR does not run them. The desk sells the form a qualified path can actually load.
Desks usually mean prills when they talk about the smaller, tower-made particles, often discussed in a band around 1 to 2.5 millimetres, and granules when they mean the larger particles, often discussed around 2 to 4 millimetres. Those bands are market language. They are not a certificate. The screen analysis on your cargo is the analysis of the lot that was qualified, not a textbook range copied into the contract.
Other words show up and should be pinned down. "Granular" sometimes gets used for any urea that is not a powder. "Prilled" sometimes gets used for any small round fertilizer. "Technical urea" and "automotive grade" are not synonyms for fertilizer prills. If the plant melts urea for a resin, or needs a feedstock with a limit on conditioning chemicals, say that. A fertilizer granule that spreads well can still be the wrong feedstock.
Fines and dust are part of the form conversation. Prills, because they are smaller and because towers make a share of broken particles, are often dustier. Granules are often harder and cleaner to handle, until a lot has been crushed in storage or loaded with a lot of undersize. Do not assume "granular" means dust-free. Ask what the lot's undersize looks like.
The decision: which form to import
Decide the form from the receiver, not from what a vessel can complete.
A fertilizer importer selling to blenders and farmers has to match the spreader and the bag the market already knows. In some markets the bagged product farmers recognise is prilled. In others the wholesale bulk product is granular because it stores and spreads with less complaint. Switching the form because a granular lot is the one that can make your laycan is a commercial change at the farm gate, even when the nitrogen conversation is the same market grade.
An industrial buyer has a different decision. A plant that dissolves or melts urea cares about moisture, biuret, and what was added to keep the particles from caking. It may not care whether a centrifugal spreader would throw the particle 25 metres. Forcing a granular fertilizer, chosen for ballistics, into a kettle that was qualified on a quieter prill, or the reverse, is still a change of feedstock. Write down which limits the plant enforces and which limits are only the fertilizer market's habit.
The decision belongs in the contract before the ship is fixed.
- Name prilled or granular.
- Say whether any other form is acceptable as a documented alternative, or forbidden.
- Attach the size band you will reject, as a screen test you actually run, or say you will take the qualified lot's screen and judge it before loading.
- Separate fertilizer spreading from industrial melt if both sit in your group. They are two briefs.
If you cannot name the form, you are not ready for a price. A price for "urea" is a price for an unfinished cargo. The bulk import note starts from the same rule: form first, then hold, then money.
NAGTAR will not keep both forms open as a trader's option through loading. If the qualified path is prills, the offer is prills. If you need granules and that path cannot load them, the answer is that this path does not cover granules.
Specifications desks ask for
Ask for the limits you will reject a ship for. Leave the rest off the letter of credit.
Form. The word prilled or granular, in the goods description. Not "urea fertilizer" alone.
Size. A minimum and a maximum, or a residue on named sieves, if you have them. If you only know the market band above, say that it is a preference and agree the governing screen before you fix the vessel. A cargo of granules with a prill-sized undersize fraction will cake, dust and spread like a blend. A cargo of prills with lumps from storage will not flow at the bagging line.
Dust and fines. State whether you have a fines limit. Prills are where this argument usually starts. Granules get it after rough handling. The test has to be one a surveyor can run on the lot, not a visual impression at the hatch.
Moisture. Urea takes up water. Moisture feeds caking, adds weight that is not product, and bothers a melt plant. Put a moisture line in the contract if you will reject on it, and say whether it is measured at loading. Arrival moisture includes the voyage and the hatch covers. Do not write "dry".
Biuret. Buyers ask about biuret because it forms when urea is held hot, and because some fertilizer uses, especially foliar sprays, and some industrial recipes treat it as a limit. Send the limit you enforce. NAGTAR confirms biuret on the qualified lot when the supply can report it. There is no standing biuret number on this desk, and a figure you remember from another origin is not this cargo.
Nitrogen. Same rule. The market says "46" as shorthand for the ordinary fertilizer grade. If your contract needs a nitrogen minimum, it has to be a term the lot certificate can support. NAGTAR does not publish a standing assay. Do not print a nitrogen percentage into a public specification and expect every stem to inherit it.
Conditioning. Some fertilizer urea is treated so it cakes less. The treatment can matter to a resin plant even when farmers never notice it. Ask whether the lot is conditioned, and name any additive you cannot accept. The answer is a fact of the lot, not a house standard.
Free ammonia, pH, or a particular industrial impurity belong on the brief only when the plant tests them. A fertilizer importer who copies a resin specification will create reject conditions the cargo was never sold to meet.
Uses and the wrong form
Fertilizer spreading. Granules are often chosen because a larger, more even particle flies further and more evenly from a spinning disc. Prills can spread short, and a dusty prill drifts. That is why a granular stem and a prilled stem are not interchangeable for a buyer whose customers already set their machines. The reverse problem is real too. A market that bags prills, and whose retailers and farmers know that bag, does not automatically want granules because a textbook says granules spread better. The wrong form sits in the warehouse.
Bulk blending. A blender who mixes urea with other granular fertilizers needs a granule that matches those particles well enough not to separate in the bag. Prills in a granular blend segregate. If blending is the use, say so, and say what else goes in the blend. NAGTAR is not blending the fertilizer. The form still has to be the one the blender can dose.
Industrial melt and solution. Urea is a feedstock for resins and for other chemical uses, and a nitrogen source that plants dissolve. Those buyers care that the particle will flow from a hopper, that moisture will not throw the batch, and that biuret or a conditioning chemical will not upset the reaction. A hard, dusty, free-flowing fertilizer granule can be awkward to dissolve if it was built to survive a spreader. A caked prill can bridge in a hopper the plant designed for a clean feed. Say melt or solution in the enquiry so the desk does not send you the spreader grade by habit.
What urea is not. It is not a raw material for cement, and it is not a substitute for a mineral in a kiln feed. Do not add it to a clinker or cement enquiry to "make use of the same vessel". A hold that has carried urea needs to be cleaned before a mineral that cannot tolerate nitrogen contamination, and a hold that has carried clinker is a poor place to load a fertilizer. Different products, different cleanliness, different buyers.
The wrong form fails at discharge and at the customer, not in the formula weight. You can have the tonnes you booked and still have a cargo the spreader, the bagging screen or the melt hopper will not take.
Packing, storage and the cargo
Form and packing are one choice.
Bulk prills and bulk granules both need a clean, dry hold, but they do not misbehave the same way. Prills have more surface and more fines, so they cake faster if the hatch leaks or the pile sweats. They also compact. Granules usually run more freely, until undersize and dust from a degraded lot fill the gaps and the stow locks up. A wet skin on either form becomes lumps. Those lumps block hoppers and look nothing like the loading sample, which was taken from dry product.
Storage before loading and after discharge follows the same physics. Keep urea under cover, off a wet floor, and away from a door that stands open in humid weather. Do not store it where it can get wet in the same space as ammonium nitrate. The two products are a known bad mixture once moisture is present. Separate bays, separate handling tools when you can, and a label that says the form so a forklift driver does not "tidy" prills onto a granular pile.
Bags change the risk without removing it. Fertilizer markets often move 50 kilogram bags, or big bags, when the receiver has no bulk intake. Bags protect the particle from the hold coating and from other residues, if the bags stay intact. They do not stop caking inside the bag when the pile gets damp or when fines were already high. Prills in bags are a common retail form in some markets. Granules in bags are common in others. The bag does not convert one into the other. A torn bag of prills in a granular warehouse is contamination of the form.
Big bags suit an industrial plant that wants lot identity and a hopper feed without a ship's grab. They are a poor answer for a farmer-bag market that sells small packs, unless you have a packing line at destination.
Do not load prills and granules in the same hold to make a parcel. Even with a separation, a claim becomes an argument about mixture. If you truly need both, they are two shipments or two holds with a written separation the surveyor can see, and two lines on the bill of lading.
Heat and time in storage raise the caking and biuret conversation. A lot that sat warm and deep for a long time is not the same handling problem as a lot loaded straight from production. You will not get a published storage life from this desk. You can ask how the qualified lot has been kept, and you can reject a caked pile at loading if the contract gives you that right.
Documents, inspection and Incoterms
The form has to survive contact with the bank.
Invoice, packing list and bill of lading should say prilled urea or granular urea, bulk or bagged, and the quantity. A bill of lading that says "urea in bulk" against a contract for granular urea in bags is already a discrepancy. If the letter of credit says "urea 46", narrow it. Use the form, the packing, and "quality as per the certificate of analysis of the lot". The number 46 is shorthand. It is not the certificate.
The certificate of analysis belongs to the cargo. It reports what was agreed: size or a screen, moisture, and nitrogen or biuret if those were contractual and the supply could test them. A generic fertilizer sheet with no lot identity will not settle a form dispute. Certificate of weight, certificate of origin, and a hold cleanliness or fitness inspection when you are in bulk, are the other papers that actually get argued. A safety data sheet is for the terminal file.
Inspection should sample the form you bought. Agree the point of sampling, the sieves, the moisture method, and whose result governs. Watch the surveyor record fines, lumps and free-flowing behaviour, not only a nitrogen line. A nitrogen result that looks like the market grade does not prove the particles are granules. Photographs of the stow and of the sieve stack are useful when a receiver later says the cargo arrived as dust and lumps.
Incoterms still only move cost and risk. Under FOB you fix the vessel, so you inherit a hold that must be fit for the form you named. Risk passes on board. Under CFR freight is arranged and risk still passes at loading, which means a wet voyage is your insurance question. Under CIF you get the cover the Incoterm states, and you should read whether caking from sweat is something that cover will pay. Name the discharge port. The loading port comes with the qualified lot. Do not leave the form blank on an FOB recap and expect to choose it at the hatch.
A mid-deal switch fails these papers even when everyone is friendly. The credit, the mate's receipt, the certificate and the import permit, where the destination uses one, were written for one form. Changing prills to granules to save a stem means amending all of them, or shipping goods the documents do not describe. NAGTAR will not do that quietly.
How Algerian supply is qualified
Qualification is a check that a real lot of one form can be documented for your window. It is not a standing offer of both forms, and it is not a plant capacity.
You name prilled or granular, the limits you enforce, the packing, the volume and the destination. The desk asks whether Algerian supply can meet that form with a certificate the contract can call for. If it can, you see the inspection plan and the commercial frame. If the available lot is the other form, you are told. You can open a new brief for that form. You cannot have it slipped under the old description.
Nitrogen and biuret, when you need them, are part of that lot conversation. They are not printed here as facts. Size is treated the same way: market bands help you talk, the loading screen decides.
A buyer who adds urea to a cement raw-material list will be redirected. The product is a fertilizer and an industrial feedstock. Qualification uses fertilizer and feedstock questions, not kiln questions.
What to send in a urea inquiry
Use the trade inquiry or the urea page. English is enough.
- Prilled or granular, and whether the other form is forbidden.
- Fertilizer spreading, blending, or industrial melt or solution.
- Any nitrogen, biuret, moisture, size or conditioning limit you actually enforce.
- Bulk, bags or big bags, and how you discharge.
- Quantity, discharge port and window.
- Whether a caked or dusty lot is a reject at loading.
One line on the last cargo your receiver complained about is worth more than a full textbook range. "Prills caked in the bags" and "granules were too small for our spreader" send the desk in different directions.
Is urea a cement raw material?
No. It is a nitrogen fertilizer and an industrial feedstock. It is not a clinker substitute, a kiln feed or a cement additive. Ship it as urea, store it as urea, and do not tidy it into a mineral parcel because the voyage looks convenient.
Can the form change after the recap?
No. Prilled and granular are different goods. A switch changes the screen, the dust, the caking, the spreader or the melt feed, and the documents. If the qualified path cannot load the form you named, the deal stops or a new brief starts. It is not corrected at the hatch.
Do you publish a prill size or a biuret figure?
No. Buyers talk about prills and granules in familiar size bands, and they ask about biuret. Both are confirmed on the lot when they are part of the contract. A band in a market conversation is not the screen analysis of the cargo, and a biuret limit from another origin is not a NAGTAR standard.
Which form suits a spreader?
Often granules, because particle size and evenness suit many spinning-disc machines, and dust is lower when the lot is sound. Often prills, when that is the product the local bag and the local farmer already use. Name the market you sell into. Do not take a general preference as your specification.
Which form suits an industrial melt?
The form that flows, meets the moisture and biuret limits you enforce, and does not carry a conditioning treatment your reaction cannot accept. Ballistics do not matter. Say melt or solution on the enquiry so a fertilizer granule is not assumed to be acceptable.
What if the bags cake before discharge?
Treat it as a condition claim against whatever the contract allowed, not as a surprise change of form. Caking is what fines, pressure and moisture do, and prills usually show it first. The right controls are the loading inspection, the hold or the bag, and a reject right you wrote down. They are not a permission to replace the lot with the other form at the discharge port.