Sulphur 416 Jan-Feb 2025
31 January 2025
A complete listing of all articles and news items that appeared in Sulphur magazine during 2024.
A review of papers presented at CRU’s Nitrogen+Syngas 2025 Expoconference, held in Barcelona from February 10th-12th 2025.
India’s push to replace its sizeable urea imports with home grown capacity continues, but may not keep pace with rising domestic demand.
In her Indian 2025-26 budget presentation on February 1st, finance minster Nirmala Sitharaman announced a $1.15 billion investment to build a new 1.27 million t/a ammonia-urea complex at Namrup in Assam province. The plant will be a brownfield development at the Brahmaputra Valley Fertiliser Corporation Ltd (BVFCL) site. Sitharaman said that it was part of the Indian government’s commitment to strengthening agricultural infrastructure and self-sufficiency in fertilizer production. The gas-based ammonia-urea plant is expected to start up in 2028-29 and will supply farmers in northeast and eastern India.
Nickel Asia Corp. (NAC) says that it has completed the sale of its 15.6% stake in Coral Bay Nickel Corp. to its Japanese partner Sumitomo Metal Mining. Nickel Asia says that the sale has been due to “unfavourable market conditions” for the high pressure acid leach (HPAL) nickel processing plant. Although Coral Bay is regarded as one of the most efficient HPAL units in the world, nickel prices have been extremely volatile over the past few years and stood a 4-year lows in January at around 15,000/t, their lowest level since September 2020. Nickel Asia still owns a 10% stake in the Taganito HPAL Nickel Corp.
SKW Piesteritz cut production and closed one of its two ammonia plants indefinitely in mid-January.