Hopewell, Va.-Sources with Honeywell confirmed last week that the company’s Hopewell, Va., facility, which produces caprolactam and ammonium sulfate fertilizer, will “be running in the very near term” after shutting down the week after Thanksgiving with mechanical problems. The company remained noncommittal about the actual start-up date and the issue plaguing the plant, but industry sources reported rumors that Dec. 23 is the target for a restart, and that issues with the facility’s sulfuric acid plant caused the shutdown. The Hopewell facility’s nameplate capacity for its Sulf-N ammonium sulfate fertilizer grades is 1.4 million mt/y. The outage has caused an already tight domestic ammonium sulfate market to tighten further, prompting some price increases from competing producers last week. Effective Dec. 16, Agrium’s granular ammonium sulfate posting firmed to $310/st DEL in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, up $35/st from the Nov. 24 list price. Effective Dec. 16, granular ammonium sulfate postings from DSM Chemicals firmed $30/st to $255/st DEL in Georgia, $260/st DEL in Florida, and $240/st FOB Augusta. Standard pricing from DSM was up also, to $210/st DEL in Florida.
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