Revamping Nutrien’s Phosphate Operations, Now Self-Sufficient in Phosphate Rock

Nutrien’s phosphate operations are now fully integrated with respect to phosphate rock supply and no longer require imports of any offshore phosphate rock.

After the merger was completed in January 2018, the company conducted a thorough review on how to optimize its newly combined businesses. One of the key decisions that came out of that review was a rebalancing and repurposing of its North American phosphate assets.

The company closed its phosphate facility in Redwater, Alberta, which previously relied on imported phosphate rock from OCP (Western Sahara), to produce ammonium sulfate instead. Nutrien already operates a large nitrogen plant at the Redwater site, and this move is expected to double the site’s ammonium sulfate capacity to 700,000 tonnes per year, by the third-quarter of 2019. 

Nutrien closed its smaller Geismar, Louisiana phosphate facility at the end of 2018, which also relied on imported phosphate rock.  We are increasing production of monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and other products at our phosphate facilities in Aurora, North Carolina and White Springs, Florida. Both of these facilities are supplied by their own rock mines.  

“This increase in production is expected to offset the reduction in supply from our Redwater facility, and ensure a continued supply of phosphate products to our Western Canadian market,” says Raef Sully, Nutrien’s CEO of Nitrogen and Phosphate. 

“These actions are also expected to reduce our per-tonne phosphate costs, which will strengthen our company and better enable us to continue to feed the future,” Raef adds.