K+S reported that it expects to be able to extract some 10 million mt more potash specialties due to the expansion at its Werra complex over the expansion’s lifetime (to 2060) compared with the volume produced today. In an earnings call with analysts on Nov. 14, K+S said it hopes to convert the Unterbreizbach, Thuringia, and Wintershall sites, which together make up the Werra integrated production complex, to a dry processing method by 2026/27 (GM Oct. 21, p. 32).
“The secondary mining technology combined with the dry backfill will allow us to use high ore content areas, and therefore, we will need to extract less rock salt for the same output,” said K+S Chief Operating Officer Holger Riemensperger.
“The Unterbreizbach site, for instance, we can run another eight years,” he said.
K+S will use its proprietary electrostatic separation (ESTA) process to sort salt minerals dry without the use of water. The technology already is well established at the company, but now has been “decisively further developed,” the company said.
Once completed, the conversion of production at the Unterbreizbach and Wintershall plants will more than halve the total volume of process water for the Werra Plant to 1 million cubic meters per year, K+S said. Not using water in the production process will also mean drying downstream processes will not be needed, reducing the need for fossil fuel energy. CO2 emissions will be reduced by around 50% at the two sites.
“Combining all of these together substantially improves our cost position and allows for a higher proportion of potash magnesium specialties. The specialty potash magnesium fertilizer I am referring to is our Korn-Kali brand, where we have a high market share in all the regions where we serve,” said Riemensperger.
But today the company is “production limited” and not able to meet the growing global demand, he told analysts.
The dry processing conversion project will increase capacity of granule production as well, which, Riemensperger reminded, improves field applicability and also provides the option of adding secondary nutrients.
“Due to the significantly reduced CO2 emissions, one can call this ‘green potash,'” he said.
Riemensperger put the total investment in the project at about €600 million (approximately $615.5 million at current exchange rates), adding that the incremental difference between the investment and the investment need going forward in a shareholder equity situation is only €300 million. “In other words,” he said, “the extra 10 million mt potash specialties come at only €300 million investment”.
The Werra plant is home to three of the company’s combined sites. For the time being, the third production facility – the plant at the Hattorf site – will continue to operate with the current technology, K+S has said.
The project to convert to a dry processing method is a linchpin project in K+S’ “Werra 2060” strategy, designed to strengthen the competitiveness of the Werra plant and to extend its life with increased and more stable production, as well as reducing the environmental footprint of the company’s domestic potash production.
The Werra plant currently generates half of K+S’ German production output, and according to the company, can cover approximately 40% of Western European potash demand.
The company highlighted the deposit at Werra, including the new Marbach field, has reached another 40 years of potash mining.
Also in the Werra 2060 project, K+S sees the new Marbach mining field as helping open up prospects for the company’s Werra Plant until 2060 (GM June 9, 2021). The Marbach mining field extends from the southwestern edge of the current mining operations in the Eitratal Valley in eastern Hesse in the direction of Fulda.
Riemensperger reminded analysts at this month’s earnings call that Marbach is “well explored and K+S knows what to expect in the area, so the site is low risk.”
At present, K+S is not actively mining in Marbach.
Responding to an analyst’s question about the timing of a decision on resumption of potash production at the company’s Siegfried-Giesen site, Riemensperger said there are still some legal claims ongoing.
“Before [the claims] are finally decided, we cannot go for an investment decision. So the decision may be still a couple of years away,” he said.
Mining operations were discontinued at the Siegfried-Giesen site in the Hildesheim district of Germany’s north-central Lower Saxony State in 1987, but the mine was retained as a reserve mine by K+S because it has substantial proven reserves. The potash deposit there has a high content of valuable nutrients and is particularly suitable for the production of fertilizer specialties.
The Sarstedt salt deposit on which Siegfried-Giesen is based has proven reserves of more than 100 million mt of sylvinite and hard salt, sufficient for at least 40 years of potash production.
The Lower Saxony State Authority for Mining, Energy, and Geology (LBEG) in January 2019 issued the permit for a possible resumption of potash production at the site (GM Feb. 1, 2019).
K+S provided little in the way of any update on the ramp-up of its Bethune potash mine site in Saskatchewan, other than that the company was doing “a Bethune ramp-up deep dive” in the course of 2023.
At a first-quarter 2022 earnings call in May, K+S reported that it was increasing the capex budget by €50 million for Bethune to accelerate the ramp-up of the operation “not only targeting the short-term acceleration of the ramp-up, but proactively also the longer-term ramp-up of the site,” Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors and CEO Burkhard Lohr told analysts at a company earnings call (GM May 13, p. 1).
According to Lohr at the time, the ramp-up project would increase production capability at Bethune by no more than 50,000-150,000 mt annually as of 2023. He had said for technical reasons there is not much more capability than that in Bethune, and that the increase would come from secondary mining.
However, in the long-term, K+S said it is looking to a ramp-up in capacity to 4 million mt/y at Bethune, as well as to increase the operation’s granular products.