David Hopkins, Managing Director of CF Fertilisers UK, has announced plans to retire on April 30. He joined CF in 2010 when the company acquired Terra Industries Inc.
Brett Nightingale has been selected to replace Hopkins upon his retirement. He has been with CF since 2011 and was appointed Vice President of Sales in 2016. He formerly worked for Trademark Nitrogen, Tampa. He will report to Bert Frost, Senior Vice President, Sales, Market Development, and Supply Chain.
Australia’s Strike Energy Ltd., Thebarton, South Australia, on Jan. 11 announced the launch of Project Haber, an ammonia and urea complex for Western Australia’s Narngulu Industrial Estate, adjacent to Geraldton Port. The complex, which includes a 1.4 million mt/y urea plant and an 800,000 mt/y ammonia plant, would use gas from Strike’s Greater Erregulla development in the Perth Basin via a 120-km pipeline.
The launch of the nitrogen fertilizer project comes after a year of feasibility studies with engineering group TechnipFMC on a national urea facility with blended input of some blue and green hydrogen.
In parallel, Strike said it had been awarded – subject to final execution – an option for a long-term lease over the 60-hectare site, which has direct access to state rail and road networks. The design of the facility also includes 300,000 mt of on-site urea storage, power/utilities, and steam generation and rail siding for transport.
“The Narngulu location has been chosen due to its proximity to our Perth Basin gas fields and access to transport and shipping options,” said the Australian energy company. “Whilst the economics are supported by the company’s high-quality, low-cost gas, it is envisaged that over the useful life of the plant an increased amount of green hydrogen would supplant the raw gas input.”
Consequently, Project Haber includes the construction of a 10MW hydrogen electrolyser that will enable Strike to take advantage of the abundant local wind energy generated in Western Australia’s Mid-West region to form a green hydrogen input stream, which would represent approximately 2 percent of the initial hydrogen consumed. Local renewable energy will also be preferenced where possible to generate the electricity feed into the plant and reduce fuel gas consumption, Strike said.
The energy company puts the estimated cost of the total development at US$1.8 billion (A$2.30 billion), with a 20-30 year useful life. Gross fertilizer revenues from Project Haber are estimated at between approximately A$540-A$700 million (approximately US$418-US$542 at current exchange rates) per annum, based on current urea prices in both wholesale and direct markets, it said.
Strike has entered into discussions “with several parties” who have an interest in securing offtake and or equity in the project, and said it will commence a formal offtake tender with various Australia and international urea consumers in the second quarter of this year.
“With the competitive advantage of a low-cost gas input, access to transport infrastructure, and proximity to Australian fertilizer consumers, Project Haber is expected to deliver more competitively-priced urea than international imports into Australia,” Strike said.
The company plans to secure offtake agreements for up to 80 percent of the product prior to entering into front-end engineering and design for the project.
It also plans to begin marketing equity participation in the project toward the end of calendar 2021, where it expects to retain around a 30 percent carried interest in Project Haber.
Strike noted that Australian nitrogen fertilizer consumption has increased 67 percent over the past decade due to global population growth and the avoidance of additional land clearing placing rising pressures on achieving higher yields from Australian farms every year.
Yet the country’s domestic urea production has almost completely ceased due to rising input (energy) costs. Incitec Pivot Ltd. (IPL) currently is Australia’s sole urea producer, with capacity to produce 340,000 mt/y at its Gibson Island plant in Brisbane, Queensland, on Australia’s East Coast, according to Green Markets data. However, the producer has been dogged with gas supply issues to the Gibson Island production site, which also includes ammonia and ammonium sulfate production capacity.
IPL Managing Director and CEO Jeanne Johns has been highly critical of gas pricing in eastern Australia, arguing that the domestic gas market needed to return to affordable, internationally competitive pricing (GM Aug. 7 & Jan. 31, 2019). Last September, she welcomed the Australian federal government’s plans to reset Australia’s East Coast gas market (GM Sept.18, 2020). One of the key points in the government’s new gas plan is new agreements with the three East Coast LNG exporters to avoid potential supply shortfalls in the domestic market and ensure that affordable gas is available to local businesses.
Certainly, the continuity of IPL’s Gibson Island operations is reliant on the company securing an economical gas contract after December 2022. A new gas supply agreement was secured for the plant in June 2019 for supply through December 2022, replacing a temporary one-year gas contract that expired on Dec. 31, 2019 (GM June 7, 2019).
New urea production projects in the country also face multiple hurdles. Perdaman Industries’ (Chemicals and Fertilisers) push to establish a 2.14 million mt/y granular urea project near Karratha on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, for example, has been a long-time in development. Perdaman inked a 20-year natural gas supply agreement with Woodside Energy for the project in November 2018 (GM Nov. 21, 2018), but only signed an engineering, supply of equipment and materials, construction, pre-commissioning, and commissioning for the execution of the urea plant late last year. The deal was inked with Clough Group, Perth, and Italy’s Saipem SpA (GM Dec. 31, 2020).
It is unclear whether Perdaman has reached any offtake deals for urea output from the Karratha plant. The company back in 2010 had inked a deal with Incitec Pivot Ltd. (IPL) for its then proposed coal-gasification Collie urea plant, also in the state (GM Oct. 18, 2010). That deal covered the purchase of the entire output of 2 million mt/y granular product for 20 years.
Strong Australian demand growth for urea has been increasingly met by imports, which in 2019 reached 1.7 million mt, up from just 800,000 mt a decade earlier, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade data, cited by Strike.
Strike said the Haber Project will be primarily focused on meeting the needs of Australian farmers, with surplus product to be made available to international markets.
“The advantaged location of Project Haber in Geraldton is its position at the northern end of Western Australia’s wheat belt region, where about 30 percent of Australia’s total urea consumption occurs,” said Strike. “Currently more than 260,000 mt of fertilizer is imported via the Geraldton port annually, which reinforces the available market in Project Haber’s identified location.”
The company believes Project Haber has the potential to displace nearly A$1 billion of trade deficit as Australia becomes more self-reliant in the manufacturing of urea fertilizers.
Belarus former presidential candidate and Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has called on Norwegian group Yara International ASA, Oslo, to suspend its supply contracts with Belarus’ state-owned potash producer, Belaruskali, and to support Belaruskali potash workers on strike, according to an Interfax report this week, citing a Jan. 11 statement from Tikhanovskaya’s Telegram channel.
In a letter, Tikhanovskaya expressed her gratitude to Yara International ASA President and CEO Svein Tore Holsether for his stance against violence in Belarus following the disputed Aug. 9 re-election of incumbent Alexander Lukashenko and for Yara’s support for the people of Belarus and Belaruskali strikers, but she believes Yara should consider pausing or not prolonging the contract with its Belarusian partner, according to the report.
Tikhanovskaya also asked Yara to consider establishing a solidarity fund to support Belaruskali workers on strike. According to her press service, more than 130 Belaruskali workers are currently on strike.
In the latest of a series of updates on its website expressing “concern about the Belarus situation” following the Aug. 9 elections, Holsether said last month “the continued suppression of human and workers’ rights in Belarus, as described in the recent report by the OSCE Rapporteur, is unacceptable,” and that “the current situation is not tenable for Yara” (GM Dec. 11, 2020). However, the CEO, who visited Belaruskali in September to make his position clear, did not say whether Yara would sever business ties with the potash producer.
In a separate development this week, Tikhanovskaya has discussed the possibility of imposing target tariff sanctions on Belaruskali with Lithuanian Economy and Innovation Minister Aušrinė Armonaitė, according to an Interfax report this week.
The U.K. government on Jan. 26 closes a consultation seeking views on how the country’s farmers can reduce ammonia emissions.
The consultation, launched on Nov. 3, has presented three options, including a total ban on solid urea fertilizers, or a requirement to stabilize them with the addition of a urease inhibitor, a chemical that helps to slow the conversion of urea to ammonium (GM Nov. 6, 2020).
A third option would be the requirement to restrict the spreading of solid urea fertilizers so that they can only be used from Jan. 15 to March 31.
A ban on solid urea fertilizers would achieve around 31 percent of the ammonia reduction target by 2030, DEFRA said. Liquid urea would be excluded from any new rules.
The U.K.’s National Farmers Union (NFU) is urging the country’s farmers to respond to the consultation. The NFU Combinable Crops Board chair, Matt Culley, in a Q&A on the union’s website said urea was the most commonly used form of nitrogen fertilizer in the world, and “an important tool for farmers in producing food.
“Urea has a big role to play, particularly when it comes to first applications, if it’s used in the right way and in the right places,” he said. “Many growers now will only use urea early on in their fertilizer program and switch to ammonium nitrate as the weather warms up and the ground warms up.”
It offers several advantages when used alongside ammonium nitrate as well as helping to maintain a competitive fertilizer market in the U.K., and is safer to handle, said Culley.
If a valued product like urea was lost, it will have an impact on farmers’ business and cost of production, he said.
The U.K. imported 816,353 mt of solid urea in 2019, according to the country’s revenue and Customs (HMRC) office. Imports in the first 10 months of last year were 656,008 mt, versus 674,887 mt in the same period in 2019.
The country has no domestic urea production, and demand is entirely currently met by imports from The Netherlands, Germany, and Russia, as well as the Middle East.
Uralkali, Moscow, has bought a plant to produce compound fertilizer from Alfa Bank in Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, according an Interfax report this week.
The purchase of Geo NPK LLC, owners of the Arvi NPK plant in Chernyakhovsk, was made through the Silivint and Silivint Transport subsidiaries of the potash company and completed on Dec. 31, 2020, according to the report.
The Arvi NPK plant had become the property of Alfa Bank in 2019 as part of bankruptcy proceedings following unrecovered debt from the owner of the plant, Lithuanian entrepreneur Vidmantas Kucinskas.
The plant has production capacity of 240,000 mt/y of granular compound fertilizer, and started up in 2008. Prior to the start of bankruptcy proceedings, the operation in 2015 had revenue of RUB2.6 billion, profit from sales of RUB62 million, and made a net loss of RUB259 million, according to the report.
Uralkali has yet to confirm or comment on the acquisition.
PhosAgro, Moscow, said this week it will increase the use of renewable energy for production of agrochemical products from 2021 after its JSC Apatit subsidiary signed a contract for the supply of hydroelectric power with Russia’s TGC-1.
The 100MW of power contracted means that more than 60 percent of the output of Apatit’s apatite beneficiation plant will be produced using “green” electricity. PhosAgro’s board approved a climate strategy in December last year. The core element of this strategy is continued work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including indirect emissions that are generated during the production of electricity consumed by the company’s production facilities
K+S Group, Kassel, this week reminded the wider industry of its important contribution to the production of active ingredients for the pharmaceutical industry. It said its specialties in this sector comprise a wide range of applications “not only enriching our lives on a daily basis, but also being vital.”
The Biontech/Pfizer corona vaccine ComirnatyR is only applicable with the addition of high-purity sodium chloride solution, K+S said, adding that it is one of the largest manufacturers of the pharmaceutical-grade sodium chloride required for this purpose.
“Prior to injection, the Biontech/Pfizer corona vaccine must first be diluted with 1.8 ml NaCl per dose before it can be administered,” the company said. “The high-purity sodium chloride contained in the saline solution is the mode of transportation for the vaccine enabling its absorption by the human organism.”
K+S is the world’s largest producer of pharmaceutical salt. In Germany, the company produces several 10,000 mt of high-purity sodium chloride annually at the Borth salt plant in the Wesel district of North Rhine-Westphalia. High purity sodium chloride is not only used as an infusion solution in hospitals, but also in dialysis and for the production of pharmaceuticals.
Haldor Topsøe, Lyngby, Denmark, and Dutch firm Proton Ventures BV have announced the start-up of the first TertiNOx™ catalyst reference to reduce nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen oxides NOx at Greece’s Kavala Fertilizers Ltd.
The TertiNOx catalyst removes N2O, a potent greenhouse gas with an estimated effect on global warming 298 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2), Topsøe, said.
“At the current performance level, Kavala Fertilizers’ nitric acid unit will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30.000 mt CO2 equivalents per year,” said the Danish catalysis company, adding that Kavala Fertilizers is one of the largest nitric acid producers in Greece.
Topsøe supplied both catalyst and basic engineering for the project.
According to the Danish company, Kavala’s nitric acid plant has already exceeded its design conversion with N2O emissions below 10 ppm, low ammonia slip, and practically eliminated NOx emissions.
Egyptian Financial and Industrial Co. (EFIC) is considering setting up a compound fertilizer production line, according to a report by Daily News Egypt, citing an unnamed company source. The new proposal replaces an earlier plan by EFIC for a potassium sulfate production line.
Discussions for the new compound fertilizer line are ongoing at board level, with a decision likely within 3-6 months.
The production capacity under consideration has not been reported, but around 80 percent of output is expected to be exported.
EFIC’s management expects the project to take around three years to break even and contribute cash flow, according to the report. However, a decision on how to fund the project has yet to be made.
EFIC is a 99.9 percent-owned subsidiary of the Suez Company for Fertilizers and produces and exports SSP, GSSP, ammonium sulfate, and di-calcium phosphate, as well as producing sulfuric acid as a raw material. It operates two main plants at Kafr El-Zayat and Assuit.
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall Reservation last week celebrated a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in a long-standing case against FMC Corp., a month after filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Idaho in another long-standing battle over a land swap between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and J.R. Simplot Co., Boise.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 12 ruling against FMC was the company’s final appeal contesting the Tribes’ jurisdiction to regulate storage of about 22 million tons of hazardous waste on the Eastern Michaud Superfund site west of Pocatello.
By denying certiorari, the nation’s highest court deferred to findings of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Courts and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirming a District Court’s findings that required FMC to comply with tribal jurisdiction. In November 2019, the 9th Circuit Court ruled unanimously that the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes can impose $1.5 million in annual fees against FMC for storing the waste.
That ruling meant the fees do not include interest for past due annual storage fees as long as the hazardous waste is stored within the reservation. Annual waste storage fees not collected since 2002 would total about $27 million.
A Tribal Appeals Court said tanker rail cars buried at the site contained from 200 to 2,000 tons of elemental phosphorus sludge or slag, up to 25 percent that remained in each of the tankers at the time they were buried because FMC concluded cleaning them would be dangerous to employees.
The 9th Circuit Court ruled FMC’s waste “threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare” of the tribes to the extent that it “imperil[s] the subsistence or welfare” of the tribes. Phosphorus is toxic when ingested, absorbed, or inhaled. It ignites when exposed to air.
Paul Yochum, FMC’s spokesman in Pocatello, could not be reached for comment about the Supreme Court ruling, but he expressed disappointment in the 9th Circuit ruling 14 months ago. “FMC has made substantial progress working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Tribes, and the state of Idaho to remediate the Pocatello plant site,” he said.
In the meantime, Yochum said “FMC will continue to meet its environmental obligations at the site and redevelop the property for the benefit of all Southeast Idaho residents.”
FMC operated the world’s largest elemental phosphorus plant outside Pocatello on reservation land from 1949 to 2001, when it shut down the four-furnace complex. Virtually all of the FMC plant site is on reservation fee land owned by the company.
After the plant’s shutdown, the tribes created the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Waste Management Act, which stipulated requirements for companies that generate or store waste on the reservation, including the monitoring of contamination sources.
The federally recognized Shoshone-Bannocks have sovereign authority over the Fort Hall Reservation under terms of the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. The reservation spans 840 square miles. Ninety-seven percent of it is either tribal land or land held in trust by the United States. The tribes and off-reservation residents rely on the Portneuf River that flows through it and the Fort Hall Bottoms along its northern bank for fishing, hunting, and recreational uses.
In 1990, EPA declared FMC’s plant and storage area and the adjacent off-reservation J.R. Simplot Co. phosphate fertilizer plant the Eastern Superfund Site under CERCLA (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act).
In 1997, EPA further charged FMC with violating RCRA, (the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act). A consent decree settling the RCRA suit required FMC to obtain permits from the Shoshone-Bannocks. FMC paid the $1.5 million negotiated annual hazardous waste use permit fee from 1998 to 2001, but refused to pay it beyond 2002 after ceasing active plant operations.
In 2005, the Shoshone-Bannocks filed suit in U.S. District Court to force FMC to comply with its voluntary agreement to obtain the annual tribal permit. FMC subsequently appealed every ruling by tribal and federal courts, but FMC now has exhausted its appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In the land swap matter, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes filed suit in U.S. District Court in Idaho last month over a land exchange agreement between the J.R. Simplot and the BLM that was signed by a top BLM official last August (GM Aug. 21, 2020).
The 713.5 acres of federal land being conveyed to Simplot adjacent to its Pocatello, Idaho, phosphate plant will enable the company to expand its phosphogypsum stacks and construct some 97 acres of cooling ponds to reduce fluoride emissions, provide additional space for plant operations, and extend the plant’s life. In exchange, Simplot is donating 160 acres and providing an additional 666.46 acres of non-federal land within the Chinese Peak-Blackrock Canyon area.
Advocates of the swap said it will protect about 600 Simplot jobs at the Pocatello plant and Smoky Canyon Mine and another 1,300 jobs that indirectly rely on the Don Plant.
The Shoshone-Bannocks are concerned the agreement will pave the way for more air and water pollution of the already contaminated site, imperiling cultural resources. In the current complaint, the Tribes criticize the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) analysis and question whether Simplot has clear title to the lands it wishes to swap. It also alleges that shooting has occurred on some of the lands, which means lead contamination and other debris.
Simplot first proposed the exchange in 1994, but the approval process was delayed after concerns arose regarding groundwater quality in the Eastern Michaud Flats near Simplot’s Don Plant and the adjacent FMC elemental phosphorus plant, which was designated a Superfund site in 1998 under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). BLM approved the exchange in 2007, but the Shoshone-Bannocks challenged it in U.S. District Court in Idaho, charging that BLM was obligated to prepare an EIS under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In May 2011, the court agreed with the Tribes and ordered BLM to prepare the EIS. BLM issued a final EIS earlier last summer (GM June 5, 2020) before approving the swap in August.
