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Nitrogen+Syngas 396 Jul-Aug 2025

21 July 2025

Drone attack on Nevinnomyssk Azot

Russian and Ukrainian news outlets have reported that there has been a drone attack on the Nevinnomyssk Azot chemical plant in Russia’s Stavropol district. The attack took place on the night of June 14th. Ukraine’s Centre for Counteracting Disinformation said that the fertilizer plant “is a critical element of the Russian military-industrial complex. It produces up to a million tonnes of ammonia and more than a million tonnes of ammonium nitrate annually – a key component for explosives and artillery shells.”

Latest in Agricultural

Cherepovets hit by drone strikes; phosphate impact unclear

Multiple drone strikes have hit the industrial city of Cherepovets in Russia's Vologda Oblast region, according to Russian news agency TASS. The area contains PhosAgro's largest phosphate fertilizer production site. Cherepovets has a production capacity of around 700,000 t/a NPK and around 814,000 t/year DAP/MAP, according to CRU data, making it the largest phosphate fertilizer production site across Europe and the CIS. The site also contains several sulphuric acid plants with a combined capacity of 4.5 million t/a, making it Russia's largest production hub for the acid. This entire volume is consumed domestically.

CRU Phosphates+Potash conference focuses on sulphur

CRU’s Phosphates+Potash Expoconference was held in Paris in mid-April, with the Iran crisis uppermost in everyone’s mind. Margins are under pressure, sulphur has become a strategic constraint, and the phosphates investment pipeline is thin. CRU Principal Consultant Humphrey Knight examined the fallout from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, noting that fertilizers have been hit harder than most bulk commodities. A large share of exportable sulphur and traded urea normally originates in, or passes through, Gulf producers. The effective closure of the strait has squeezed the traded part of these markets, where international prices are set, and pushed benchmarks up sharply. The global phosphate market is structurally tight, and the combination of Chinese export policy and Middle East logistics has pushed the traded segment into a much more fragile state.