Although the plant had been running for some time, Koch Sulfur Products announced last week that its Corpus Christi prilling facility was ready to go into full operation 2,000 mt/day.
Martin Sulfur constructed the PrillMax 2000 facility. Randy Tauscher, Martin’s executive vice president, sulfur division, said the plant began start-up operations during the first week of July.
“With this new equipment and 16-acre site for storing and shipping prilled sulfur, Koch Sulfur is adding to its capability to serve the global market,” said Douglas Towns, general manager of global sulfur marketing. “We are excited about this expansion and our shipping and storage facility at the Port of Corpus Christi.”
Koch Sulfur Products markets the sulfur produced at affiliate Flint Hills Resources. In Corpus Christi, the company has been shipping molten sulfur since 1995.
“This new priller gives us much more flexibility,” Towns said. “With a molten product, we are limited to using barges to transport it to areas along the U.S. Gulf Coast, including Tampa, Fla. Prilled sulfur, on the other hand, can be loaded into larger vessels and exported anywhere in the world.”
The Gulf Coast has gone from having no prill operations to having three facilities at Galveston, four on the Mississippi River, and now two at Corpus Christi. Tauscher said the cost of prilling was less than the transportation to Tampa.
India, China, and other Asian destinations were in the market and paying relatively high prices. However, Brazil, one of the big buyers on the Gulf Coast, was not in the spot market because it apparently had sufficient supplies on hand, as well as sulfur under more favorable contracts.
Negotiations for new fourth-quarter prices for the delivery of molten sulfur to Tampa will not begin for about a month, but sulfur suppliers would have the option of putting more into prill for export, which would put pressure on phosphate producers to pay higher prices.