
Fertilizer Industry News Roundup
The first global review of phosphate rock resources since 2010 has reported that technically recoverable reserves should last for more than 300 years.
The first global review of phosphate rock resources since 2010 has reported that technically recoverable reserves should last for more than 300 years.
The inaugural Argus Sustainable Fertilizer Americas Conference is being held at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, Tampa, Florida, USA, 5-6 June 2023.
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.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hit European fertilizer producers hard. Ammonia plants across the continent have been inactive over the winter due to prohibitively high feedstock costs. The future of nitrogen fertilizer production in the region will depend on access to an affordable, secure and sustainable energy supply and the switchover to low-carbon technologies.
Brazil’s agricultural industry continues to expand at the same time that most of its nitrogen fertilizer industry has shut down. Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to deal with the consequences of years of underinvestment and mismanagement, and elsewhere, gas discoveries in other parts of the continent have not led to the new plant construction boom that had once been hoped for.
The steam methane reformer is at the heart of most world-scale synthesis gas plants for ammonia, methanol or hydrogen production, and its optimum performance will maximise plant production and efficiency. This article studies the wide variety of parameters that need to be considered if a steam methane reformer is optimised.
Håkon Reistad Fure stepped down from Yara International’s board of directors in mid-November due to new professional commitments, the company has announced.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media. Urea: The market remained weak at the start of the year with urea prices falling as producers fought for liquidity. Egyptian product fell by $40/t to $495/t f.o.b. in a matter of days, while f.o.b. prices in the Middle East and southeast Asia similarly fell to around $440/t. Urea prices in many end-user markets also slumped: US prices fell over the course of the first week of January by $30/t, Brazil by $15/t and many European markets by around $20/t.
Yara International is to supply fossil-free fertilizers to El Parque Papas, Argentina’s largest potato grower, in 2023.
Fertilizer International presents a global round-up of phosphate rock, phosphoric acid and finished phosphates projects.