Acron Group, Moscow, has commissioned a new 700,000 mt/y urea granulation unit at its Veliky Novgorod site in northwest Russia, and will enable the group to produce granular urea for the first time. Hitherto, Acron has only produced urea that is prilled or rotoform.
Acron put the project cost at $29 million, and said it includes an additional finished product warehouse capable of storing 15,000 mt of urea.
The Russian fertilizer group has been investing heavily in its urea production capacity. In late 2018, it commissioned its sixth urea plant at Veliky Novgorod (GM Nov. 30, 2018), and last year it launched an expansion of the Urea-6 unit. The completion of the expansion will take overall urea production capacity at Veliky Novgorod to 1.9 million mt/y by 2021. The expansion will increase the Urea-6 unit’s capacity to 735,000 mt/y from the existing 500,000+ mt/y (GM April 12, 2019)
The completion of the Urea-6 project will make Acron a major urea producer in both Russia and Europe, capable of producing up to 1.4 million mt/y of granulated and prilled urea and liquid UAN, the group said.