Yara International ASA will invest 90 million reais (~$18.2 million) in Brazil through 2025 for research and development of special fertilizers aimed at boosting regenerative agriculture practices, according to a Bloomberg report.
The company will hire about 50 people for the team that will be based at a research facility in Sumare, Sao Paulo state, Yara Brazil CEO Marcelo Altieri said at a Dec. 5 press conference. Yara invested 100 million reais (~$20 million) in 2018 in its first micronutrients plant in Sumare.
The company’s Industrial Complex at Rio Grande, in the south of Brazil, reached full capacity in 2023, with output at 1.1 million mt/y of NPK fertilizer after recent modernizing investments. Last year, the plant was working at half capacity.
In other news, Yara expects to start commercial scale production of green ammonia at its plant in Cubatao in second-quarter 2024, replacing 3% of its natural gas use with biomethane supplied by Brazilian bioenergy producer Raizen SA under a five-year contract. The biomethane is made from ethanol production waste.
The green ammonia startup in Brazil will be launched prior the product’s launch in Europe.
“There is no time to lose, and Yara is committed to reducing emissions all over the world, through multiple industrial methods. We plan to produce biomethane in Brazil, and in Norway we are currently constructing a green ammonia pilot plant,” a Yara spokesperson told Green Markets.
“Recently we signed a binding Carbon Capture Storage-agreement with Northern Lights (GM Nov. 24, p. 1) which will enable the world’s first cross-border transportation and permanent storage of approximately 800,000 mt/y of CO2 from our plant in Sluiskil,” he added.