A buyer has been found for 12,000 mt of Russian ammonium nitrate (AN) that have been stranded in the Estonian port of Tallinn’s Muuga Harbor since earlier this year (GM July 15, p. 29).
According to Estonia’s ERR News, the tons have been sold to agro trading group Scandagra Group AB, which is jointly owned by Sweden’s largest agri cooperative, Lantmännen, and Danish cooperative DLG.
The AN tons, which are part of a total of around 80,000 mt of fertilizers, including urea and compound fertilizers, stuck in Muuga, are owned by the Swiss subsidiary of Russian fertilizer group Acron Group. The tons are stored at the AS DBT terminal, which is 100% owned by the Acron Group.
Acron was unable to sell onwards the AN or other fertilizer tons after European Union (EU) sanctions were introduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Estonia’s government requested an exemption from its Financial Intelligence Unit to sell the fertilizers.
The ERR News report cited Scandagra’s CEO Margus Venelaine as saying there is not likely to be a shortage of buyers for the AN, which he said was bought with the whole Baltic market in mind.
Scandagra will ship and truck the tons to its Baltic customers once the customs formalities are completed and the tons are bagged.
According to Estonia’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA), cited by the report, regular tests have been carried out on the AN and the tons have not become degraded or dangerous.
It is unclear from the report if the remaining fertilizers stranded in Muuga harbor have been sold.
According to the report, there are also fertilizer tons belonging to two Russian fertilizer producers stuck in storage in the Estonian port of Sillamäe.