Land O’Lakes, Inc., Arden Hills, Minn., and United Suppliers Inc., Ames, Iowa, have announced their intent to merge their crop inputs businesses. Together, the two organizations will provide owner customers’ expanded product offerings, enhanced precision agriculture services, tools and technologies, improved product insights, consulting services and more.

“This move comes at a time when scale is increasingly important in addressing changing industry dynamics, including rapid consolidation on the supplier, retailer and grower levels, fast-paced technological innovation and the need for increasing and expanded service offerings for customers,” said Chris Policinski, LOL president and CEO. “We are excited to come together with United Suppliers and expect our members, owners and customers will benefit greatly from this merger.”

Under this agreement, the intention is to merge United Suppliers and LOL. The first step of the merger will be to combine the two companies’ seed and crop protection businesses, and a second step to follow will bring in the crop nutrient business. This merger builds on the recent successes of the two companies and aims to create a single, strong, relevant and competitive entity. In 2014, LOL’s WinField had $4.9 billion in seed and crop protection product sales and United Suppliers had $2.6 billion in crop protection, seed and crop nutrient sales.

“United Suppliers is excited to join with Land O’Lakes Inc.,” said Brad Oelmann, president and CEO of United Suppliers. “We are both experiencing great growth in this industry and together we view this merger as a continuation of that journey.”

Before the deal is final, both United Suppliers’ owners and LOL members will need to vote on the details surrounding the merger. Those votes are slated for August 2015, with the closing anticipated in October 2015.

Aligned Ag Distributors LLC, Ames, Iowa, which is jointly owned by Franklin Holding Co. LLC and United Suppliers, responded to the news. “We have been in communication with the leaders of Land O’ Lakes/WinField and United Suppliers during these negotiations. We congratulate them on their recent announcement and we look forward to working with the newly merged company as our partner in Aligned Ag Distributors,” said Steve Watts, chairman of Franklin Holding and president/CEO of Aligned Ag Distributors. “Together, we will provide extensive coverage for the key agricultural regions of the U.S. and beyond.”

Land O’Lakes/WinField, United Suppliers, and Aligned Ag Distributors will each continue with their existing go-to-market strategies and will draw upon each other’s expertise to better meet customer needs.

Franklin Holding was founded by six retail distributors located in the western U.S. including The McGregor Co., The Tremont Group, Mid Valley Agricultural Services, Buttonwillow Warehouse Co., Butte County Rice Growers Assn., and Land View Inc. These companies operate independently, however, their crop protection divisions are formally aligned under the umbrella of Aligned Ag Distributors.

Egypt Kuwait Holding (EKH) Chairman Moataz Al Alfi in an interview with Bloomberg said that the company has halted plans to construct a fertilizer plant in the U.S. due to high construction costs. He said the company may invest in the Middle East instead.

EKH is a prime investor is the Magnolia Nitrogen Idaho (Magnida) project (GM Sept. 8, 2014), which was seeking to build a major project in American Falls, Idaho. The project had already jumped many hurdles including a major battle with potential neighbor ConAgra Foods.

The Tampa anhydrous ammonia price for June has been settled at $450/mt CFR, down from May’s $465/mt CFR.

The Mosaic Co. has announced that its board of directors has elected James "Joc" C. O’Rourke, currently executive vice president – operations and chief operating officer, to succeed James T. Prokopanko as president and CEO, effective Aug. 5, 2015. After that date, Prokopanko will serve as senior advisor until his planned retirement on Jan. 4, 2016. "Jim’s leadership over the past eight and a half years helped build a strong, innovative company with a culture of integrity and an emphasis on execution. My fellow directors and I wish him only the best, and we respect his decision to retire," said Robert Lumpkins, Mosaic board chairman. "The board has full confidence in Joc and the rest of Mosaic’s talented management team. Together, they will help Mosaic build on Jim’s legacy of success for our employees, customers, investors, communities and other stakeholders."

Agrium Inc. said April 23 that it intends to divest the West Sacramento, Calif., product upgrade facility and site in 2015. The site has access to tidewater and imports the raw materials to produce UAN solutions for the California market. Over the past two years, the site has produced on average about 200,000 mt of nitrogen solution products. The decision to divest the site was made as part of Agrium’s portfolio review and any impact on financials are expected to be negligible.

While Israel Chemicals Ltd. has signed agreements with customers in China for 1.1 million mt of potash during 2015, the tons cannot be delivered in the first half due to the strike at Dead Sea Works. ICL said the agreements include options for an additional 100,000 mt. The ICL price is up $10/mt in line with other suppliers to China.

OCI Partners LP said April 23 that it has restarted its ammonia and methanol production lines after completing a planned debottlenecking project. The upgrade is expected to increase the facility’s ammonia production capacity by 15 percent from 265,000 mt/y to 305,000 mt/y and its methanol production capacity by 25 percent from 730,000 mt/y to 912,500 mt/y. The ammonia production line has achieved its new, upgraded design capacity while the methanol production line is expected to ramp-up its capacity fully during the next two weeks.

To partially fund the current debottlenecking project costs, the LP has received an additional capital contribution of $60 million from its sponsor, OCI NV, in exchange for 3,502,218 common units priced at $17.132 which represents the 21-trading day volume-weighted average price of the LP’s common units on the New York Stock Exchange ended April 16, 2015. This increases OCI NV’s total unit ownership to 69,497,590 common units from a previous 65,995,372 common units resulting in an ownership 79.88 percent of the total common units outstanding.

The final cost of the project will be announced during the LP’s first quarter earnings announcement on May 11, 2015.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., whose three members of the Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile SA board of directors resigned last month (GM March 23, p. 1 ), has nominated three employees to represent Series A shares at the April 24 SQM shareholders meeting. They include:
Ms. Joanne Boyes, senior director of corporate reporting, finance and compliance;
Robert Kirkpatrick, vice president, deputy general counsel and assistant corporate secretary;
Arnfinn Prugger, vice president, technical services for PCS Potash.

The PotashCorp members who resigned were Alejandro Montero, Jose Maria Eyzaguirre and Wayne Brownlee.

While PotashCorp opted for fresh faces, three of Pampa Calichera’s four nominees for Series A seats are currently on the board:
Hernán Büchi B., a civil engineer who has been on the SQM board since 1993;
Juan Antonio Guzmán M., an industrial and chemical engineer who has been on the SQM board since 2013;
Wolf von Appen B., an entrepreneur who has been on the SQM board since 2005.

Dieter Linneberg A., an economist from the Universidad de Chile;

SailingStone Holdings Ltd. has nominated Edward Waitzer as an independent director representing the Series B shares. Waitzer is a senior partner with the Canadian law firm Stikeman Elliott LLP, and his practice focuses on complex business transactions.

Belarusian Potash Co. said today that it has reached an accord with the Consortium of the Chinese buyers regarding a price increase to $315/mt CFR for shipments to China in 2015.

CF Industries Holdings Inc. reported a 27 percent drop in fourth-quarter net income attributable to the common shareholders of $238.3 million ($4.82 per diluted share) on sales of $1.22 billion down from the year-ago $325.8 million ($5.71 per share) and $1.33 billion, respectively.

And despite record ammonia sales for the year ending Dec. 31, 2014, net earnings were off 5 percent to $1.39 billion ($27.08 per share) on sales of $4.74 billion compared to 2013’s $1.46 billion ($24.74 per share) and $5.47 billion, respectively. 2014 also included $462.8 million for an after-tax gain on the sale of the Phosphate segment to The Mosaic Co.

CF also reported that cost estimates for its major expansion at Donaldsonville, La., and Port, Neal, Iowa, are up just under 10 percent from $3.8 billion to $4.2 billion. The increase is primarily associated with Port Neal and reflects updated construction estimates based on having received finalized engineering drawings, specific quantities of material and labor hours, and higher labor costs.

CF said the projects, which will boost overall nitrogen capacity by 25 percent, remain on schedule, with Donaldsonville urea startup expected in third-quarter 2015, UAN in fourth-quarter 2015 and ammonia in early 2016.

Port Neal ammonia startup is expect in mid-2016 and urea in third-quarter 2016.

CF is upbeat about the spring season, expecting some 90 million acres of corn to be planted in the U.S. It also expects a big spring application season due to a shortened fall ammonia application season. It said it is pleased with its ammonia order book and that there has been strong customer interests for urea for delivery in April.