Uralchem-Uralkali on April 22 reported that a humanitarian shipment of 34,000 mt of fertilizers has been fully loaded onto a vessel in Riga, Latvia, and has started its journey to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, where it is due to arrive in late May.
The shipment is the second Uralchem-Uralkali fertilizer cargo to be released from a European Union (EU) port under the auspices of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and donated free of charge to an African nation.
For this latest shipment – a cargo of potash, urea, and NPK fertilizers – Uralchem-Uralkali and the WFP reached an agreement with state-owned Kenya National Trading Corp. WFP is acting as service provider, chartering the vessel and providing other logistics support, according to a Tass report, citing a WFP spokesperson.
The first consignment consisted of 20,000 mt of NPK fertilizers, loaded in the Belgian port of Antwerp and officially handed over to Malawi in early March, having been shipped via Mozambique’s port of Beira for final onward transit by land (GM Feb. 3, p. 29; Nov. 11, 2022).
In its April 22 statement, Uralchem-Uralkali reiterated that it is committed to donating approximately 300,000 mt of mineral fertilizers stranded in EU ports to developing nations “to alleviate the unprecedented global food crisis and prevent significant crop loss in countries that face such risks.”