Centrex Ltd., Adelaide, South Australia, recently announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Agriflex Pty Ltd., has signed binding offtake agreements with Ameropa Australia Pty Ltd. (Ameropa) and New Zealand-based Balance Agri Nutrients for the supply of phosphate rock from the Ardmore Phosphate Project.
Ameropa has committed to purchase 15,000-16,000 mt of phosphate from Ardmore in the first year of a 2.75-year agreement. The parties will then meet within 120 days of the end of each contract year to mutually agree on the tonnages for each subsequent contract year.
On July 1, 2022, Centrex announced the signing of a trial shipment with Ameropa, with the company agreeing to sell 5,000 mt of Ardmore phosphate to Ameropa. The supply of the phosphate under the new offtake agreement is expected to commence on April 1, 2023.
Centrex has set aside 10% of production at Ardmore to fulfill its projected allocation under the Ameropa agreement. Ardmore has current capacity of 120,000 mt/y, but is pursuing an expansion to 524,000 mt/y.
Centrex will supply Ballance with 30,000 mt of phosphate from Ardmore in the first year of the agreement, with subsequent tonnages renegotiated for each subsequent contract year. On May 12, 2022, Centrex announced the signing of a trial shipment with Balance, with Ballance completing its testing of the product earlier this year. Centrex has allotted up to 20% of Ardmore’s production towards the Balance offtake agreement.