K+S starts pouring foundations at Wintershall

Contractors have begun sinking the 160 bored concrete piles that will hold up the new above-ground processing hall at K+S’s Wintershall potash plant in Heringen, central Germany, marking the first visible surface construction on the €600 million ($696 million) Werra 2060 transformation project. K+S confirmed the milestone on 12 August, telling investors alongside its second-quarter results that “above-ground implementation of the major ‘Werra 2060’ project has also recently begun”.

The Werra operation — K+S’s largest German site, straddling the Hesse–Thuringia border — is made up of three factories with their own mines: Wintershall and Hattorf, both in and around the Hessian town of Heringen and sharing the Hattorf-Wintershall mine below; and Unterbreizbach, on the Thuringian side. Together they employ about 4,500 people and produce roughly half of all potassium- and magnesium-based fertilizers sold in the EU.