Industry mourns loss of Stanton
Ronald P. Stanton, 88, chairman emeritus of Trammo Inc., died at home on Sept. 26, 2016.
Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and arriving in the U.S. at the age of 9, he had a long and successful career as a commodity trader. After military service during the Korean War, he started working as a trader under Henry Leir as a trainee with International Ore and Minerals in New York, later becoming head of its fertilizer trading division. After Interore was acquired by Occidental Petroleum, he worked under Armand Hammer trading fertilizers.
Stanton left Occidental in 1965 and founded Transammonia, Inc. (now called Trammo Inc.) which in recent years has been the largest privately held company in the New York area. He and one assistant first started trading in ammonia. Eventually he expanded the company’s activities to all fertilizer products and began to open offices all over the world.
Trammo now has 33 offices and 500 employees. The company eventually added other trading products including liquefied petroleum gases, petrochemicals, coal, sulfuric acid, and others.
Stanton served in important roles in The Fertilizer Institute and IFA.
“Ronald was certainly one of the leaders in our industry,” said Trammo’s current CEO Henk van Dalfsen. “The Trammo family is saddened by his passing. We have enormous respect for Ronald as a businessman with an innate understanding of markets and an amazing feel for trading. We will always remember the passion and brilliance with which he led our company for many decades.”