Fertilizer International 504 Sept-Oct 2021
30 September 2021
U.S. Borax expands its agricultural portfolio
INTERVIEW
U.S. Borax expands its agricultural portfolio
In an exclusive, broad ranging interview, Wendall Boehlje, technical sales agronomist at U.S. Borax (part of Rio Tinto), talks to Fertilizer International about the launch of two new agricultural market products by U.S. Borax earlier this year.
“A lot of farmers in our marketplace ask specifically for U.S. Borax when they need boron – because we’re the ones who told them boron needed checking when others didn’t.”
U.S. Borax launched two new boron products, Anhybor® and Zincubor® , in March this year. These are being offered alongside the company’s three main pre-existing agricultural products, Fertibor® , Granubor® and Solubor® . What was the thinking behind their launch?
Anhybor is anhydrous borax. Anhybor is the answer to our competition. It’s an excellent way to get boron into the soil solution or the system you’re farming with.
One distinctive thing that we did in launching Anhybor was to experiment with the different binders used to stick anhydrous borax onto fertilizer granules and publish a technical bulletin with the test results. So, along with introducing these products, we have documentation to present to our customers showing there are inexpensive ways that you can bind these small particles of boron.
If you’re going to use this kind of coating, we’ve done the research to show that you should use a binder to make sure that it stays attached. The U.S. Borax way is not just to offer products, but also send information on how to use them and why.
In the case of Zincubor, we sell zinc borate for industrial applications and looked at it closer for agriculture. We realized that the amount of zinc that’s there, in relation to the amount of boron, is pretty much the exact ratio that you would want to add.
If people are adding zinc, they’re adding boron, and here we have a product that has both of them included. So, let’s offer it into the ag market directly.
Anhybor and Zincubor can be applied in several ways. For example, they can be directly applied to soils, incorporated to produce boron-enriched compound fertilizers, or used as a coating in NPK blends with the help of a binding agent. Is this flexibility a real strength?
Different go-to-market strategies are needed with fertilizers in different regions or countries, right? They might not need the substantial amounts of boron provided in other products, as it’s easier to over apply a granular product that’s 100 percent soluble.
We want to avoid the risk of over application of boron where the science says we need a little less. That’s where these two products fit in. Especially for those places where they’re compounding fertilizers in large quantities.
The level of boron that’s available in soils is really declining in most places in the world. How do we make sure that we have adequate boron for plant nutrition.
Water-soluble NPK fertilizers used in drip irrigation, for example, typically contain magnesium, sulphur and micronutrients as standard. Yet boron and other micronutrients, at least traditionally, have been less commonly applied in conventional broad acre agriculture. Is that still largely true – or is the situation rapidly changing, in your view?
I believe there is a realisation and understanding for every crop, when we test the soil here in North America, that boron is very, very consistently under the five parts per million threshold. There’s really no available boron in the soil solution.
Some farmers even call me to tell me it’s really low and ask how much boron they should apply. Other folks that are pushing the yield envelope, meanwhile, all of a sudden discover that boron’s the thing that’s keeping them from getting to that next plateau of yield attainment.
For commodity crops, there’s been a real awakening in the last few years with steady advancement in the use of liquid boron products. Sales of boric acid into that market continue to totally outpace anything else.
Our customers are describing 2021 as a banner year in liquid boron applications. Their sheds are empty after the North American season. What that shows is pent up demand to use boron as soon as the commodity prices will reward that extra application. Farmers are going to do that this year because the economics are there and products are just flying out the door.
“The U.S. Borax way is not just to offer products, but also send information on how to use them and why.”
Boron dominates the global agricultural market for micronutrients, reaching around 300,000 tonnes (B2 O3 ) in 2018, according to some estimates. Are there particular crop types and particular regions or countries where boron has made great inroads in recent years?
Being North American, I would say the Americas, right? But, yes, I believe there is a general awareness across the world that boron is the limiting factor for the higher yields that farmers are trying to reach now.
In India there’s definitely a significant uptick in demand for borates, and 35 percent of Chinese soils are thought to be boron deficient too. Almost anywhere where they’ve been farming for a long time, as they certainly have in China, is depleted.
Growing up in Iowa, I’m aware that we’re a nation of corn and soybean growers. Farmers who are really pushing yields are quickly realising that the amount of boron that’s necessary to reach those really high yields in a crop like corn is pretty substantial – as that’s how they get to an almost unbelievable 400 or 500 bushels per acre.
The same goes for soybeans. The flowering structures are where the greatest demand for boron is in the plant. Soybeans have a lot of flowers and you can’t get a lot of bean pods without lots of flowers and can’t get a lot of flowers if you don’t have enough boron.
To what extent is technology – precision agriculture, fertigation and foliar fertilization – also driving up boron usage?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the use of precision agriculture is driving people to look at micronutrients. In fact, it’s probably the other way around.
As people become more aware and understand that a micronutrient may be their limiting yield factor they look to the tools that are on the table today. Precision ag lets you build a prescription that includes micronutrient applications – so, I think it’s more of a driver in the other direction.
Farmers with remote sensing are probably the one exception to that. They’re understanding the need for micronutrients more quickly and asking questions that will lead to correcting micronutrient deficiency as the answer faster.
Many fertilizer manufacturers now offer growers a complete package that integrates the selling of plant nutrient products with agronomic information and services. How true is that of U.S. Borax – and how crucial is it to get a strong, positive message about boron out into the market?
Clearly, in the world of boron manufacturers and marketers, U.S. Borax stands out in that we actually have resources around the world, including people like myself. We pass on the message about the agricultural need for boron to our partners.
We are active in the ag market with those resources and with digital marketing too. That’s been successful because a lot of farmers in our marketplace ask specifically for U.S. Borax when they need boron – because we’re the ones who told them boron needed checking when others didn’t.
We sell through distributors who have armies of agronomists on their staff. The boron message flows through those agronomists, who are consulting both with farmers and with us at the same time.
To grow the market for boron, is there also a need for strong partnerships – informal or formal – with fertilizer manufacturers, distributors and retailers as well?
Not only do we distribute directly to agronomy retailers, we also sell through our distributor partners who do resell our products to manufacturers.
We have some very large retail partners that we work with to get the right product mix. In North America the liquid product segment has been a huge part of the business, one that we’ve sold mostly boric acid into.
We now recognise that we also need to have our own branded products because of the sheer demand that’s out there.
The launch of Anhybor® and Zincubor® demonstrates the commitment of U.S. Borax to innovation. What other new developments are we likely to see from the company in the way agricultural boron is marketed and sold?
There are two ingredients in 10 percent boron solution – boric acid which is dry and monoethanolamine (MEA) which is the liquid petroleum part. Well, recently there’s been a shortage of MEA and that’s revealed a couple of things.
Firstly, the supply chain is a little more fragile than anticipated and, secondly, there’s probably room in the market for another formulation of liquid 10 percent. And it just so happens that U.S. Borax has one, Solubor Flow, that we’re bringing back into the market.
In North America we’ll be launching Solubor Flow again this year. It’s actually a relaunch as it was first launched here 20 plus years ago.
On top of that, because the liquid market is robust, Solubor Flow plus potassium will also be coming onto the U.S. market next year. We’ve already patented its manufacturing and are also likely to lodge an applications patent for this product too.
