Category: Outlook & Reviews

The inaugural Argus Sustainable Fertilizer Americas Conference is being held at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, Tampa, Florida, USA, 5-6 June 2023.

More than 370 delegates from over 160 companies and 40 countries gathered at the Hilton Bomonti Hotel, Istanbul, Turkey, 27 February to 1 March, for CRU’s Phosphates 2023 conference.

Anglo American’s CEO Duncan Wanblad spoke in detail about the company’s new strategy for the Woodsmith mine during an annual results presentation on 23rd February. Selected highlights are provided below.

Alzbeta Klein, CEO and Director General of the International Fertilizer Association (IFA), sets the scene for IFA’s Annual Conference in Prague, 22-24 May.

The Sustainable Fertilizer Academy (SFA) offers everyone within the fertilizer industry access to education on sustainability via a certified e-learning programme. More than 150 students have registered to date and over 40 alumni have graduated from the academy since it opened in September last year.

Anglo American recently unveiled the long-awaited strategy update for its large-scale Woodsmith mine project in the UK. Initial production of the company’s POLY4 polyhalite fertilizer is now scheduled to begin in 2027. The mine’s ultimate annual output has also been increased to 13 million tonnes.

In September last year, one of the largest mining equipment and technology deals in history closed when FLSmidth finally completed its purchase of thyssenkrupp Mining. We look at the implications for the fertilizer sector and phosphate and potash mining.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media. Urea: Scarcity continued to drive urea prices higher in some markets at the end of April. The US market remains short on urea and prices spiked to reflect this. Nola barges for April were trading as high as $450/st f.o.b. ($490/t cfr), 55 percent up on this year’s low point. Southeast Asia remains short on urea too, amid planned and unplanned turnarounds, with one cargo trading at around $345/t f.o.b.

Meena Chauhan , Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

The production of renewable fuels by retrofitting existing refineries and their infrastructure is witnessing exponential growth. The impact on the existing amine, sour water and sulphur recovery units is inevitable. Based on several case studies, Marco van Son, Shashank Gujale and Tammy Chan of Worley Comprimo discuss the various options available to holistically review the sulphur block to determine the impact and mitigation of processing bio-feed.