Tag: Investment

While demand for ammonia remains – for now at least – strongly tied to fertilizer and farming, over the three decades that I’ve edited this publication, methanol’s story has been a very different one, with a succession of major new slices of demand coming every few years from new applications that flare up and then mature or even drop away again. For a while in the 1990s it was MTBE, the oxygenated fuel additive that had a brief flourish in the US before being shut down by leaking fuel tanks leaching into ground water. Then there was dimethyl ether (DME) as a blendstock for LPG, and methanol itself directly blended into gasoline in China to keep up with soaring vehicle fuel demand. More recently, methanol to olefins (MTO) has added almost another 25% of demand over and above existing chemical and fuel uses. But as the world cracks down on coal production and use, China’s attempt to use methanol as a way of using domestic coal to replace imported oil seems to have passed its high water mark and begun to recede.

A review of recent additions to fertilizer product portfolios and new process technologies, as innovation within the industry accelerates to decarbonise production and improve nutrient use efficiency (NUE).

Yara International is to build a major new speciality fertilizer and biostimulant production plant near York.

Tony Will, the president and CEO of CF Industries, is the new chair of the International Fertilizer Association (IFA). He was elected in June alongside a number of other executive board members and board directors.

BHP is committed to investing $5.7 billion to complete the first stage of the Jansen project and bring it into operation by the end of 2026. This under-construction Saskatchewan mine will then ramp up to produce more than four million tonnes of potash annually before the end of the decade.

The first global review of phosphate rock resources since 2010 has reported that technically recoverable reserves should last for more than 300 years.

Anglo American recently unveiled the long-awaited strategy update for its large-scale Woodsmith mine project in the UK. Initial production of the company’s POLY4 polyhalite fertilizer is now scheduled to begin in 2027. The mine’s ultimate annual output has also been increased to 13 million tonnes.

In September last year, one of the largest mining equipment and technology deals in history closed when FLSmidth finally completed its purchase of thyssenkrupp Mining. We look at the implications for the fertilizer sector and phosphate and potash mining.

Evaporation and crystallisation are widely used throughout the fertilizer industry. These powerful production processes are helping fertilizer manufacturers diversify their product portfolios, improve profitability and meet sustainability goals.

PhosAgro’s shareholders elected a new board of directors during the company’s annual general meeting (AGM), held on 24 March. The new board includes: Viktor Ivanov, Yuriy Krugovykh, Siroj Loikov, Natalia Pashkevich, Mikhail Rybnikov, Alexander Seleznev, Vladimir Trukhachev, Viktor Cherepov, Alexander Sharabaiko and Andrey Sharonov. The AGM also approved the company’s annual report for 2022, which reflected total production of 11.1 million t/a of agrochemical products (up nearly 5% year-on-year); and a one-third increase in investments to develop the company. PhosAgro CEO Mikhail Rybnikov said: “The consistent implementation of our long-term development programme enabled us to increase production last year, and we remained the leader in terms of the total supply of all types of fertilizers to the domestic market and expanded our support in the social sphere considerably. We intend to maintain this momentum of steady development. In 2023, we expect further growth in the production of agrochemical products, to 11.3 million tonnes. Our workforce laid the groundwork for this in January-February, as we increased production of phosphoric acid and sulphuric acid by 22% and 17% year-onyear, respectively, over this period.”