Tag: IFA

Charlotte Hebebrand, director general of the International Fertilizer Association (IFA), is to step down at the beginning of May, after more than seven years in the role.

With more than 15 million hectares of land watered by drip irrigation globally, the technology’s agricultural potential remains enormous. Fertigation – the ability to manage and regulate both water and plant nutrients – is a key advantage helping drive worldwide growth.

The Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) has announced the election of Angela Booth as its new Vice Chairman. AIC says that Angela brings many years of broad experience in the industry, including several years as Chair of the AIC Feed Executive Committee, a member of the AIC Board, and several roles on industry executives and committees. She was previously the AB Agri Director of Feed Safety. In her career, Angela has had widespread involvement, including feed safety, operations, quality, nutrition, purchasing, legislation and sustainability.

After a poor 2019, when global demand contracted by nearly 2.5%, phosphate markets are expected to rebound in 2020. Saudi Arabia and Morocco dominate new capacity additions while India and Brazil continue to be the key importers. US and Chinese production is in slow decline, meanwhile.

At the time of writing this editorial, the World Economic Forum was having its usual annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos. Prior to this year’s meeting, as usual the WEF had produced its annual Global Risks Report to serve as a talking point for the meeting. While some of the risks were as usual political and economic, from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the “retreat from multilateralism” to growing inequalities of wealth in the developed world and “domestic political polarisation”, for the first time in the organisation’s history, the top five global risks in the report ranked by likeliness – which looks at potential global pitfalls over the next 10 years – were environmental. Perhaps with the pictures of Australia’s bush fire season fresh in their minds, the 750 experts ranked extreme weather events as the most likely, but climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainability in agriculture all ranked highly.

Brazil is the main centre for new nitrogen demand in Latin America, but in spite of major oil and gas discoveries in the 2000s, has failed to develop a downstream nitrogen fertilizer industry.

Leading nitrogen and phosphate producers, including ICL, OCP and Yara, have all launched major sustainable fertilizer production projects. The aim is to incorporate recovered nutrients or low-carbon feedstocks into their manufacturing processes.

We look ahead at fertilizer industry prospects for the next 12 months, including supply and demand growth, and explore the key agricultural, macroeconomic and geopolitical drivers likely to shape the market during 2020.

Gordon (Gord) McKenzie became the new president and CEO of Canpotex in mid-January. His appointment is the culmination of a 25-year fertilizer industry career in a variety of senior sales and marketing roles. Gord most recently served as Mosaic’s vice president for global sales.

Fertilizer International presents a round-up of phosphate rock, phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizer projects.