SEOUL-- A first shipment of urea will arrive in South Korea from China next week, a move expected to help address a supply crunch of urea solution, a key fluid needed in diesel cars to cut emissions, Seoul officials said Friday.

A ship carrying 300 tons of urea will leave from the Chinese eastern city of Tianjin on Saturday and arrive in the southeastern city of Ulsan on Tuesday, according to the government.

The government said it plans to accelerate necessary procedures to enable the urea to be used to produce urea solution upon arrival.

The shipment is part of the 18,700 tons of urea that have been under inspection by China for exports to South Korea.

South Korea is grappling with the supply shortage of urea solution as China imposed export curbs on urea to ease domestic supply bottlenecks in October.

Beijing has decided to export the 18,700 tons of urea for which Korean firms had already signed contracts with Chinese exporters. Of them, applications for export inspections on 11,310 tons of urea have been filed.

The government said it is making a flurry of diplomatic efforts to import urea and its solution in a bid to avert a potential logistics crisis.

A Korean firm is in talks with an Indonesian company to import about 10,000 tons of urea, and another company has clinched a deal to bring in 40 tons of urea for industrial uses from Taiwan.

Local firms have recently inked deals to additionally import urea solution from countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico and Australia.

The government said the output of five major producers of urea solution has surpassed the average daily consumption of 600,000 liters in the latest sign that the supply shortage is easing.

South Korea said 97.6 percent of its urea imports came from China in the first nine months of this year, up from 88 percent in 2020, underscoring its heavy reliance on the resource-rich neighbor for the key material.

Last year, South Korea imported 80,000 tons of urea, an amount sufficient to produce around 240 million liters of urea solution for diesel cars.

Source: Yonhap News Agency