EuroChem Advances Toward Potash Market Entry

摘要

EuroChem (Moscow), Russia's largest fertilizer producer and the 10th-largest player worldwide, says it is making good progress with plans to enter the potash fertilizer market by late 2013. The program will eventually make EuroChem one of the top players in potash and add to the company's nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer businesses. The move coincides with a period of merger-and-acquisition fever in the potash industry following the recent announcement of a hostile bid by BHP Billiton (Melbourne) for PotashCorp, the biggest potash producer, and a possible merger between Uralkali (Berezniki, Russia) and Silvinit (Solikamsk, Russia), respectively the fourth- and fifth-largest potash players. EuroChem's plans are in two phases, involving investments in two separate potash projects in Russia. The company is currently working on the first phase of the Gremyachinsk potash mine. The deposit, in the Volgograd region, is estimated to contain 1.9 billion m.t. of potash ore reserves with an average potassium chloride (KCl) content of 30.8%. EuroChem will have 2.3 million m.t./year of potash capacity on completion of the first phase in late 2013, which the company plans to double to 4.6 million m.t./year by 2015.