Arab Potash Company plans its biggest expansion in 20 years

Introduction

Arab Potash Company (APC) launched a major strategic expansion in 2025. Known as the Southern Expansion Project, this involves a substantial enlargement of its Dead Sea evaporation pond network. It follows the conclusion of a decade-long production debottlenecking programme by the company.

APC typically operates very close to full capacity – unlike many of its larger potash producing peers. The planned 2030 entry date for its latest capacity expansion will, however, arrive as part of a global wave of new potassium chloride (muriate of potash, MOP) capacity additions. That could make maintaining current high levels of utilisation challenging for the company.

Current baseline capacity

Arab Potash Company is the world’s eighth-largest MOP producer by effective capacity with this currently standing at just under 2.9 million tonnes per annum (t/a). APC operates an integrated production complex at Safi, just south of the Dead Sea (385 metres below sea level).

The company manages an extensive solar evaporation pond system on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea (Figure 1). This covers around 120 km² currently and supplies harvested crude salts to three downstream processing facilities.

APC pumps brine from the Dead Sea into a cascading network of ponds. These use solar evaporation to progressively concentrate the dissolved salts. The solar ponds are continuously managed to promote carnallite (KMgCl3·6H2O) formation using salt dredgers. These remove NaCl as water evaporates. Over time, this allows the upgraded brine to be directed to 11 carnallite ponds.

Once the required concentration is achieved, the resulting carnallite slurry is recovered from beneath the brine using specialised pond harvesters (Figure 2). The harvested slurry is then pumped via booster stations and floating pipelines to APC’s refineries at the Safi production complex (Figure 3): the Hot Leach Plant (HLP) and two Cold Crystallization Plants (CCPl and CCPll), where it is processed into standard, fine and granular grade MOP.

About 90% of potash produced at APC’s Safi complex is destined for export markets. Jordan’s single maritime outlet, the Port of Aqaba, is APC’s primary export gateway, making the Safi-to-Aqaba logistics corridor a critical route to market. Finished product is transported predominantly by truck, a journey of around 220 kilometres, with a reported delivery frequency of roughly 110 truck movements per day.

On arrival in Aqaba, trucks are unloaded into two potash storage sheds for onward export: KCl 1 and KCl 2 – each with an effective capacity of around 390,000 tonnes. From storage, potash is transferred to shipping vessels via an extensive enclosed conveyor network. This links the sheds to the industrial port conveyor system for onward transport to the export berths. Around 124 port personnel are employed to support APC’s shipping operations at Aqaba.

Additionally, a smaller share of production is delivered directly from Safi by road to serve Jordan’s domestic market and nearby regional customers, including Saudi Arabia.

Role of JIPC at the port of Aqaba

Export shipments are executed through the Jordan Industrial Ports Company (JIPC), the industrial terminal operator at the Port of Aqaba. JIPC is a 50:50 joint venture between APC and Jordan Phosphate Mines Company (JPMC), a large regional phosphate producer, which also operates dedicated infrastructure for phosphate rock handling. The terminal occupies an area of 68,770 m² and is served by three cargo jetties (Figure 4). These fully serviced berths can each handle vessels up to 100,000 dwt and provide dedicated infrastructure for the bulk mineral and chemical trade. While APC and JPMC share the port’s operational platform and capabilities, each company markets and ships its products independently.

Why is APC scaling up?

Historically, APC’s capacity additions have been periodic and stepwise, with the last major step-change associated with the commissioning of the second Cold Crystallization Plant (CCP II) in 2010. Since then, more recent production expansions have been largely incremental – driven primarily by debottlenecking, reliability improvements and operating discipline.

In 2020, Veolia announced that it was replacing existing crystallizers with its new HPD® crystallization technologies to expand production capacity “at a leading potash fertilizer plant in Jordan” (Fertilizer International 495, p12). Although APC was not named explicitly, the upgrades formed part of a contract “to modernize a refinery on the southern shores of the Dead Sea, to better process the carnallite feedstock and extract water-soluble potash fertilizer”. These upgrades were part of company plans to increase potash production “from carnallite … pumped from the Dead Sea and evaporated in solar ponds”, according to Veolia.

Against that backdrop, APC appears to have pushed the current system close to its practical capacity limit over the period 2019-2024, with operations running at consistently high operating rates. Site observations point to high operating efficiency and infrastructure renewals – particularly in the processing plants – suggesting there is now limited upside left from incremental fixes alone.

In that context, the strategic logic for expansion is straightforward. To materially increase potash output, APC needs more ore feed, brine processing and crystallisation area: i.e., more physical solar pond capacity. The company seems to have reached the end of the road on marginal gains, leaving expansion of the pond system as the primary option left to unlock the next stage of production growth.

What does the expansion roadmap look like?

Arab Potash Company has stated an ambition to increase potash production capacity to 3.5 million t/a in the medium term. This strategic expansion is underpinned by optimising the exploitation of its Dead Sea concessions. For example, the company’s Eastern Expansion Project in the Dead Sea, concluded in 2025, is expected to deliver an uplift in annual production capacity of approximately 120,000 t/a in the medium term.

Looking ahead, APC’s next growth lever is the Southern Expansion Project. This $1.1 billion strategic investment was inaugurated by Jordan’s Prime Minister, Jafar Hassan, in a ceremony in May last year. The Southern Expansion Project involves the construction of new evaporation ponds, a state-of-the-art potash production plant and a granular potash unit. The project was slated to start in 2026 and is scheduled to be completed within four years.

APC was finalising the detailed engineering design, as of the end of 2025. The project is projected to add around 530,000 t/a of incremental capacity. CRU forecasts that the expansion uplift will be fully realised beyond 2030 (Figure 5), as the new capacity is expected to ramp up gradually, reflecting the staged commissioning of the additional pond area and associated infrastructure.

Strategic upgrades and infrastructure renewal

APC’s principal expansion plans are anchored in its upstream front-end solar evaporation pond system. Yet delivering this growth will also rely on a parallel energy programme.

The company currently operates a gas-turbine power station (54 MWh), while a second on-site power station is under construction to support the transition from a ‘grey’ to a ‘green’ energy supply. This shift is particularly relevant for the current diesel-dependent dredging fleet. The new build is also intended to strengthen steam availability for process requirements, including supply to the HLP unit.

Alongside these strategic upgrades, ongoing renewal across associated infrastructure was evident on-site during CRU’s visit, with numerous processing assets appearing recently upgraded. From an operational standpoint, APC currently runs 11 carnallite ponds supported by nine harvesters. At the time of the visit, a tenth harvester was in procurement from Royal IHC to bolster harvesting capacity and align the brine harvesting operation with the planned MOP production ramp-up. This was subsequently delivered in January (see first photo).

APC’s expansions are not limited to the Ghor Al-Safi complex. A key ongoing investment is the construction of a third port-side warehouse at the Aqaba. This was nearly complete at the time of the visit and was expected to add roughly 450,000 tonnes of additional storage capacity before the end of 2025. Like KCl 1 and 2, the new warehouse will be dedicated to high-throughput, low-loss loading operations, and is fitted with dust extraction systems, stacking equipment, reclaimers and scrapers. Based on our observations during the site visit, operational efficiencies at the port are high, with minimal product loss observed during handling and ship loading activities.

“APC’s expansion builds on a brine-based cost position that is among the most competitive globally. In theory, scaling the solar-pond complex should drive economies of scale and push APC further down the cost curve.”

Additionally, JIPC is undertaking a strategic expansion of the Aqaba industrial terminal through 2027. This is designed to lift total handling capacity to around 10 million t/a, supported by capital investment of JD145 million. The current expansion plan includes the addition of a third export line by 2026 – a threefold increase from the single ship-loading line originally operated at the port in 1994.

This new line will allow the terminal to load two granular potash vessels simultaneously, significantly improving throughput and reducing vessel waiting times. As part of the upgrade, two dedicated screening systems will be installed – one for each vessel.

A wave of capacity expansions

The potash market is set to absorb a wave of new MOP supply between now and the early 2030s. This will keep competition intense and price support limited.

APC will have to contend with additional traffic from a busy project pipeline led by Russian producers and major new projects elsewhere – including Nedra Nezhin (Belarus), Talitsky (Acron), Usolsky (EuroChem) and Jansen (BHP) (Figure 6). CRU expects global MOP output to rise from 75.6 million t/a in 2025 to 82.3 million t/a in 2030, with new capacity continuing to outweigh incremental demand.

The consequence is a forecast surplus of 4.7 million t/a of effective MOP capacity globally. For APC, the near-term implication is clear: there is limited scope for sustained upward price momentum while this surplus capacity persists. On the flip side, sustained lower prices should be advantageous for the company – APC being a lower-cost MOP producer – if this discourages higher-cost potash suppliers from serving long-haul export markets.

APC’s expansion builds on a brine-based cost position that is among the most competitive globally. In theory, scaling the solar-pond complex should drive economies of scale and push APC further down the cost curve.

Conclusions

Having carried out significant production debottlenecking, Arab Potash Company has effectively exhausted the scope for meaningful low-capex optimisation. With operations at Safi historically running at high utilisation rates, the existing system is now close to its practical limit. Further growth therefore depends on one thing: physical expansion of pond area.

While APC’s strategic logic is clear sighted, the timing of its capacity additions is perhaps less favourable – although this is mitigated somewhat by the company’s competitive cost position.

Additional tonnes are set to enter a looser global potash market, as new capacity from Canada and the CIS outpaces demand growth through the second half of the decade. In that context, APC’s expansion appears operationally necessary, but any economic upside is likely to be diluted by a more crowded and less supportive market.

In CRU’s view, the Southern Expansion Project should strengthen APC’s long-term operating position, but only after colliding with a weaker market backdrop.

Dive deeper

This article summarises the CRU Insight ‘Arab Potash Site Visit: Jordan MOP producer plans biggest expansion in 20 years’ published by our industry-leading Fertilizer Week news, analysis and pricing information service. Request a free demo here:

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For a deeper dive into the potash industry cost curve and market dynamics please contact the authors below.

About the authors

Ashmita Sen

Analyst, Fertilizer Assets, CRU Group, London ashmita.sen@crugroup.com

Humphrey Knight

Principal Consultant, CRU Group, London humphrey.knight@crugroup.com Tel: +44 207 903 2191