Itafos Inc. Houston, said on Feb. 8 it has resumed sulfuric acid production at its Arraias plant in Brazil. It said it has completed the recommissioning of the previously idled plant on schedule, within budget, and with no reportable environmental releases or recordable incidents. The company announced in October that it planned to bring the plant back up (GM Oct. 22, 2021).
“We are pleased to have safely and successfully completed the recommissioning of the sulfuric acid plant at Arraias,” said G. David Delaney, Itafos CEO. “While we continue to evaluate strategic alternatives for Arraias, we are opportunistically restarting the sulfuric acid plant to supply market demand and deliver positive margins.”
The Arraias sulfuric acid plant has production capacity of 220,000 mt/y. The company expects to operate the plant with a base load capacity of approximately 10,500 mt/m.
Itafos said it has secured short-term sulfuric acid offtake agreements for the plant’s base load capacity with pricing linked to sulfur benchmarks. Based on market demand, the company expects to opportunistically produce additional volumes of sulfuric acid to be sold on the spot market.
The surge in fertilizer prices has also carried over to Brazil sulfuric acid mt CFR, which as of Feb. 4 was reported at $270-$275/mt CFR, compared to the year-ago $85-$90/mt CFR.
Itafos said the remainder of the infrastructure associated with Arraias’ vertically integrated phosphate fertilizer business, including its mine, beneficiation plant, acidulation plant, and granulation plant, remain idled following best practices.
Arraias has approximately 500,000 mt/y of single superphosphate (SSP) capacity, which can also include SSP with micronutrients (SSP+). At full SSP capacity it has approximately 40,000 mt/y of excess sulfuric acid, with gross sulfuric acid capacity of 220,000 mt/y.