Bolivia President Luis Arce Catacora on Oct. 13 inaugurated the country’s first NPK fertilizer plant, according to a Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy press release. The new facility, located in Bolivia’s central Cochabamba province, has capacity to produce 60,000 mt/y and will potentially meet 100% of Bolivia’s NPK fertilizers demand, replacing imports.
The Bolivian Company for the Industrialization of Hydrocarbons (EBIH) will manage the plant. The state-owned firm signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Cochabamba provincial government in June 2021 to acquire land in the Santibáñez Industrial Park for the project, with a construction agreement inked in July 2022 (GM July 15, 2022).
The new plant is part of the Bolivian government’s strategy to improve Bolivia’s agricultural productivity and help it become self-sufficient in the production of its own food, said Franklin Molina, Bolivia’s Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energy.
Molina noted that Bolivia has all the raw materials it needs for the new plant. It will use urea from the Bulo Bulo plant, also located in Cochabamba province. The Bulo Bulo facility is operated by state-run oil and gas company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) and is Bolivia’s only nitrogen fertilizer production facility, with a nameplate capacity of 2,100 mt/y of granular urea.