Mayo Schmidt , the former chair of Nutrien, became its president and CEO on 18th April. He succeeds Chuck Magro who is stepping down to pursue new opportunities outside the company. In a coordinated move, Nutrien also announced that Russ Girling , TC Energy’s former president and CEO, would replace Mr Schmidt as the new chair of its board. Mr Magro made himself available to Nutrien until 16th May to allow a smooth transition.
The Chemical & Process Technologies business unit of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions is celebrating a milestone in 2021. It is one hundred years since engineer and entrepreneur Friedrich Uhde founded his own plant engineering company in a barn at his parents-in-law’s farm in Dortmund-Bövinghausen on April 6th, 1921. Now, in this centenary year, the origins of the firm are to become visible in its name again: thyssenkrupp is changing the business unit’s name to thyssenkrupp Uhde.
February saw ammonia prices jump due to a series of plant outages, including EBIC in Egypt, and several plants in North America, including two on Trinidad; the 760,000 t/a Nutrien 4 plant and 500,000 t/a Tringen 2 plant, both due to gas shortages, as well as Yara and BASF’s 750,000 t/a unit at Freeport, Texas.
Gas availability and pricing continues to affect ammonia and methanol output from Trinidad, while Venezuela struggles with sanctions and political instability.
The Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) has agreed new annual potash supply contracts with India and China.
ICIS, the independent commodity intelligence company, provides an overview of the nitrogen market. The world supply of urea looks set to outpace market demand in 2021, as several new projects come on-stream. Global ammonia demand, in contrast, is expected to rebound strongly this year after a difficult 2020. The flurry of recent green ammonia projects announcements is another significant market development.
Shutdowns in technical ammonia capacity due to the pandemic have contributed to make 2020 a turbulent year for ammonia markets, but plant shutdowns, strong fertilizer demand and a shortage of new merchant ammonia capacity are contributing to finally removing the burden of overcapacity.
Georgy Eliseev , Principal Analyst at Fertecon for IHS Markit, looks at the medium to long term outlook for both ‘green’ and ‘blue’ ammonia production.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) has unveiled plans to build Europe’s largest power-to-ammonia facility at the Danish port of Esbjerg, based on electricity from offshore wind turbines. The company said the plant will consist of 1GW of electrolysis capacity, capable of supplying sufficient hydrogen to produce 300,000 t/a of ammonia, and that the ammonia will be used as both as agricultural fertiliser and as fuel for the shipping industry. Excess heat generated in the process would be used to provide heating for around one third of local households in communities around the plant, to be sited on the west coast of Denmark. The company has signed a memorandum of understanding for the project with companies from both the agriculture and shipping sectors, including Danish Crown, Arla, DLG, Maersk and DFDS Seaways. CIP anticipates that it would cost approximately $1.2 billion to build the facility. They are currently seeking investors for the project and expect that the investment decision would be reached by 2023. The plant could enter commercial operations in 2026.
The United States has imposed duties on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports.