Low demand, high gas prices and cheaper Russian imports of urea and ammonia are keeping a lid on European fertiliser production, prompting fears of permanent plant closures. ICIS’s Deepika Thapliyal, Sylvia Tranganida, and Aura Sabadus examine the challenges faced by the sector and the potential long-term impacts on the European fertilizer industry.
We report on fertilizer production, consumption and pricing in the US market. The country’s fertilizer industry, ranked fourth globally in terms of total production capacity, has grown and developed alongside its increasingly sophisticated domestic agricultural sector.
With the addition of Green Granulation technology (GGT), Casale is the only industry licensor able to provide customers with an entire nitrogen fertilizer complex. Ken Monstrey and Matteo Fumagalli of Casale outline the benefits of this technology and its revolutionary new elements.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media. Urea: Prices in general fell further in late October. Suppliers in most regions were forced to accept lower than expected net-backs due to low import demand and high producer inventories. India was the exception with IPL securing 1.7 million tonnes of urea at $400-404/t cfr under its 20th October tender.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media
TOYO has a long history in urea granulation technologies and has recently added two new technologies to its product line-up.
It is common knowledge that wet CO₂ is corrosive to carbon steel and “dry” CO₂ is not corrosive to carbon steel. So typically engineers and contractors choose carbon steel for dry CO₂ conditions and stainless steels for wet CO₂ conditions. This can be seen in the CO₂ feed section of almost every older urea plant. But is it true that carbon steel is always the right choice for dry CO₂ and is dry CO₂ really dry under all circumstances?
Merchant markets for ammonia have faced considerable disruption in recent years due to the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Tampa ammonia contract prices increased dramatically during September, from $395/tonne c.fr to $575/ tonne c.fr. The main culprit was plant outages and reduced production at several plants in the region. The tight supply situation was exacerbated by a delay to the restart of Ma’aden’s 1.1 million t/a ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia.
Ballestra is taking a new approach to improving nutrient use efficiency by moving methylene-urea production to the fertilizer industry. Massimo Gori and Svet Valkov of Ballestra discuss the technology and benefits of having a slow-release fertilizer that uses a product from within the fertilizer industry.