Commercial urea comes from chemical plants, not from mines or animals. It is made by reacting ammonia with carbon dioxide at high temperature and pressure, and the ammonia is itself made from natural gas (or, in China, largely from coal) and nitrogen from the air. Urea plants are therefore found where gas is plentiful and cheap: the Gulf states, Russia, North Africa, South-East Asia, China, India and the United States.
How is urea made?
Production runs in three stages on one site: ammonia, urea synthesis, and finishing.
1. Natural gas to ammonia
Ammonia (NH3) is made by the Haber-Bosch process, developed by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch in the first decade of the twentieth century. The first industrial plant opened at Oppau, Germany, in 1913.
Hydrogen is the difficult ingredient, and most of it comes from natural gas. The gas is reacted with steam (steam reforming) to give hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Nitrogen is taken from the air. The two gases are then combined over an iron catalyst:
N2 + 3H2 ⇌ 2NH3
The synthesis loop runs at 300 to 500°C and at high pressure. The reaction gives off heat and does not go to completion in one pass, so unreacted gas is recycled.
2. Ammonia plus carbon dioxide to urea
The carbon dioxide stripped out when the hydrogen is made is the second raw material for urea, which is why urea plants are built beside ammonia plants. The basic urea process was patented in 1922 and is known as the Bosch-Meiser process. It has two steps:
- Ammonia and carbon dioxide combine to form ammonium carbamate: 2NH3 + CO2 ⇌ NH4CO2NH2. This step releases heat.
- The carbamate loses water to form urea: NH4CO2NH2 ⇌ CO(NH2)2 + H2O. This step absorbs heat.
Neither step is complete. The unconverted carbamate is decomposed back to ammonia and carbon dioxide and returned to the reactor, and the urea solution is concentrated by evaporation to a melt.
3. Prilling or granulation
The melt is turned into a solid in one of two ways. In a prilling tower it is sprayed from the top and freezes into small beads on the way down; prills are limited to about 2.1 mm in diameter. In a granulator the melt is layered onto seed particles to build larger, harder granules. The finished product is cooled, screened and often coated to stop caking. The two forms are sold as prilled urea and granular urea.
If the melt is held hot for too long, two urea molecules combine to form biuret, which is harmful to plants. Plants control the residence time and temperature to keep biuret low, and the limit appears on every specification. What the product is and how it is used is covered in what is urea.
Where is urea produced?
Because every urea plant sits on an ammonia plant, ammonia output is the best public measure of where nitrogen fertiliser is made. The United States Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 puts world ammonia production in 2025 at an estimated 160 million tonnes of contained nitrogen. The largest producers, in thousand tonnes of nitrogen, were:
| Country | Ammonia production, 2025 estimate (thousand tonnes N) |
|---|---|
| China | 49,000 |
| India | 15,000 |
| Russia | 15,000 |
| United States | 14,000 |
| Indonesia | 6,000 |
| Saudi Arabia | 5,200 |
| Iran | 4,800 |
| Egypt | 4,000 |
| World total | 160,000 |
The same source notes that new capacity is being built in regions with access to low-cost natural gas, and that about 88% of the ammonia produced in the United States goes into fertiliser, with urea the largest derivative by quantity.
Feedstock explains the map. A plant in Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria or Russia runs on domestic gas. China is the exception among the large producers in relying heavily on coal. India produces a great deal and still imports, because its own consumption is larger than its output.
Who are the main urea producers and exporters?
The largest producing countries are not the largest exporters. China and India consume most of what they make. Export supply comes from countries with gas and a small home market.
The table below shows the ten largest exporters of urea (HS 3102.10) among the countries that reported 2024 trade to UN Comtrade. Reporting countries declared about 30.7 million tonnes of exports in total.
| Exporter | Urea exports, 2024 (tonnes) |
|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 4,439,930 |
| Oman | 3,486,690 |
| Egypt | 3,216,412 |
| Nigeria | 3,076,846 |
| Algeria | 2,165,342 |
| Malaysia | 2,032,229 |
| Germany | 1,491,805 |
| Indonesia | 1,477,714 |
| Netherlands | 1,318,930 |
| Poland | 1,258,530 |
Three points are needed to read this table correctly.
- Russia, Qatar and Iran are missing. They did not report 2024 urea exports to UN Comtrade, so they do not appear, but they are among the largest suppliers. The International Fertilizer Association's figures for 2019 named Russia, Qatar, China and Egypt as the top four urea exporters, together 45% of world trade by volume.
- China changes from year to year. China controls urea exports through inspection and quota measures. It reported 260,554 tonnes in 2024 and 4,894,709 tonnes in 2025, which made it the largest reporting exporter of 2025.
- European figures include trade inside the European Union. Exports from Germany, the Netherlands and Poland are largely deliveries to neighbouring member states, some of it product imported and moved on.
Producers in the exporting countries are mostly state-linked or large listed companies selling through their own marketing arms, by tender, and to traders with offtake contracts. The practical route for an importer is covered in our guide to buying urea in bulk.
How urea is traded
Export urea is sold FOB the producer's port or CFR the buyer's port, in bulk vessel parcels or in bags. Each cargo carries a specification for nitrogen, biuret, moisture and particle size, and a certificate of origin naming the plant. Origin matters commercially: it sets the freight, the transit time and, in some destinations, the duty and carbon border charges. Current price levels by origin are on our dated urea price page. The upstream product has its own page at ammonia.
CBIL brokers urea between a named producer or seller and a named buyer, with quality and weight certified by an independent inspector such as SGS or Intertek at loading.
Request a urea quote with the grade, quantity, preferred origin and destination port.