Tag: Yara

Brazil’s phosphate industry is on a growth dash to meet rising domestic demand. We report on the major acquisitions, investments and expansions by CMOC, Mosaic, Yara and Itafos.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have announced the ‘Next Gen Fertilizer Challenge’, a joint EPA-USDA partnership and competition to advance agricultural sustainability in the United States. The competition includes two challenges that seek proposals for new and existing fertilizer technologies to maintain or improve crop yields while reducing the impacts of fertilizers on the environment.

Ammonia prices have been on a rising trend over the past few months as plant closures begin to make themselves felt. Yara’s Baltic ammonia price also rose sharply at the start of October, and Nutrien’s announcement of the closure of its PCS-03 plant on Trinidad helped lift prices, with Yara and Mosaic’s contract prices rising $16/t in October.

The global market for potassium sulphate is on the rise. It has become the preferred potassium fertilizer for many chloride-sensitive, high-value cash crops. This speciality potash product also commands a price premium.

Recent protests in Belarus have triggered a wave of share price volatility, London’s Financial Times reported on 18th August.

The last three years has seen a renaissance in fertilizer production and blending in sub-Saharan Africa. We highlight the expansion of capacity in Nigeria and other countries within the region.

Agricultural markets represent 75% of nitrogen demand worldwide. Rising populations, changing crop types, moves towards sustainability and the spread of speciality fertilizers and new technologies are all changing the market for nitrogen fertilizers, but the Covid pandemic may affect markets in a variety of different ways.

Merchant ammonia capacity, only a relatively small 10% of overall ammonia demand, has been expanding in recent years and was already in surplus even before the current Covid crisis, but longer term a shortage of new projects may tighten the market again.

We report on how the fertilizer industry and individual companies are working to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The widespread problem of soil micronutrient deficiency has come under the spotlight in recent years. We look at the range of specialist fertilizer products able to tackle micronutrient deficits in crops and soils.