Australian Rural & Regional News sought a response from CSBP Fertilisers to the article, CSBP’s force majeure gamble: Contracts, conflict and consequence, by Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers and received the following response.

Ryan Lamp, General Manager, CSBP Fertilisers, 31 March 2026

CSBP Fertilisers has been part of Western Australian agriculture for more than 100 years. We’ve grown alongside the farmers and communities we serve, and we value those relationships deeply.

We understand how critical reliable fertiliser supply is to growers, particularly leading into seeding.

Unprecedented supply chain challenges

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to have wide-ranging human and economic consequences, including significant disruption to global fertiliser supply chains.

For FlexiN, a liquid nitrogen fertiliser manufactured and imported by CSBP using urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), a combination of events outside our reasonable control has affected supply.

This includes export restrictions introduced by the Chinese Government to protect its domestic nitrogen supplies and mitigate their domestic risks arising from the Middle East conflict – which has led Chinese UAN suppliers to cancel significant CSBP shipments.

At the same time, our ability to mitigate this impact by increasing local Flexi-N production has been affected by an unexpected outage at a third-party ammonia plant (Yara), limiting availability of ammonia (a key input to our Flexi-N manufacturing).

As a result, CSBP has declared Force Majeure under relevant Flexi-N supply contracts – a measure of last resort employed only when physical supply is prevented by events beyond our reasonable control.

This is not a decision we have taken lightly, and we understand the impact it will have on growers’ plans for the 2026 cropping season. Our team of local account managers has been in contact with growers to inform them of these changes and what they mean for their individual fertiliser programs.

Mitigating the impact for customers

While these events are outside CSBP’s control, we are taking all reasonable steps to reduce the impact on WA growers, including:

• Actively pursuing supply of alternative products from a range of international producers and trading partners as market conditions evolve.
• Exploring options to increase local FlexiN manufacture where feasible, while actively seeking alternative sources of critical feedstock impacted by third party disruptions.
• Engaging directly with upstream suppliers who have declared force majeure, requiring them to take all reasonable steps to meet their obligations and provide clarity on their mitigation actions.
• Continuing discussions with Chinese suppliers to pursue the release of contracted cargoes and to better understand the regulatory constraints currently affecting supply.
• Working with industry bodies and the Federal Government to support efforts to improve import access, restore more reliable fertiliser supply chains and relax some of Australia’s trade settings.

Priority for seeding

Our absolute priority is to support WA growers. For March and April, we are currently forecasting 100 per cent fulfilment of contracted Flexi-N volumes, recognising the critical importance of supply during seeding.

We are being transparent with our customers about anticipated shortfalls in Flexi-N product volumes for the May to July period and are in direct communication with all affected, providing specific details on anticipated delivery timeframes.

The situation continues to evolve rapidly, and we are monitoring developments closely and communicating directly with customers as further information becomes available.