This is scary…basically telling everyone that their retirement accounts are at risk to twitter posts.
The AP’s erroneous...
Really great interactive map. Hover your mouse over nearly any country to view stats on ag production and needs. There’s...
BP admits to 11 counts of manslaughter for 2010 oil spill disaster
November 15, 2012
Oil giant BP will fork over the...
Before we get fully into election mode. Take a look at some of these stunning shots from the
Increased global production of urea is reducing prices for nitrogen fertilizers, with the downward trend likely to continue through the summer, experts say.
“Everybody wants to know where the floor is. The floor is not there yet, it’s got some way to go,” said Clive Yearsley, chairman of the Profercy fertilizer market analysis firm.
The downward direction is a major reversal from last spring, when constrained supplies caused a surge in nitrogen prices in the U.S.
Wholesale urea prices at the Gulf of Mexico — a major trading area — recently dropped below $350 per short ton, down from a peak of more than $700 per short ton in April 2012.
The price for urea is expected to drop to about $310 per short ton on wholesale markets by July or August, said Glen Buckley, chief economist at the NPK Fertilizer Advisory Service.
Read more at Capital Press
Fertilizer manufacturer CF Industries has closed its purchase of the remaining interest in the Canadian Fertilizers Limited nitrogen plant for C$910 million ($901 million).
New corn hybrids take up more nitrogen than older plant varieties after the crucial flowering stage. Amount of available N affects take up of phosphorus, potassium, sulfur.
A historical analysis of corn research shows that new hybrids are taking up more nitrogen than older plant varieties after the crucial flowering stage – a clue as to how plant scientists will need to adapt plants to increase yields.
Tony Vyn, a professor of agronomy, and Ignacio Ciampitti, a postdoctoral research associate, are studying the timing of nutrient uptake in corn and how that process affects yield. They found that modern hybrids (post-1990) took up 27% more total N from the soil after flowering than pre-1990 corn plants. In fact, N uptake after flowering in post-1990 hybrids averaged 56% of the total grain N at the end of the season.
Read more at Corn and Soybean Digest
Yara International ASA, the largest publicly traded nitrogen-fertilizer maker, aims to complete asset purchases within the coming months as it pursues a 33 percent production increase in four years from 2010 levels.
“We are working on several growth opportunities,” Yara Chief Executive Officer and President Joergen Ole Haslestad said in an interview in Oslo today. “We do believe that we will be able to close some of them in the next months to come.”
Yara is among fertilizer producers seeking acquisitions as the cost of raw materials climbs and higher food prices spur farmers to increase plantings, boosting consumption of crop nutrients. World fertilizer demand is poised to rise 2.4 percent to a record in the 2013-14 season, the International Fertilizer Industry Association forecast in November.
Read more at Bloomberg
Yara International signalled an appetite for fertilizer deals, particularly in higher-value products such as NPK, as it flagged the role of China, for now, in determining prices of commodity nitrogen nutrient markets.
Juergen Ole Haslestad, the Yara chief executive, said that the nitrogen giant’s balance sheet “has never been stronger”, reflecting “a deliberate effect to build financial flexibility for growth execution”.
The Norwegian group’s net debts, as a proportion of equity, had fallen to levels below 0.1, from a figure of 0.75 early in 2009.
Yara will exploit its low borrowing levels “to realise well-timed profitable growth”, potentially including acquisitions, besides raising its dividends, which Torgeir Kvidal, the Yara finance director, acknowledged had fallen behind a policy of 40-45% payouts.
‘More deal activity’
While making strides in commodity products towards increasing group sales of 32.5m tonnes in 2016, up from 24.5m tones in 2010, Yara had lagged in boosting volumes of value-added fertilizers, such as NPK, which had proved a key support to group profits, Mr Haslestad said.
Indeed, a 6.2% rise in volumes of nitrate and NPK products outside Europe in 2011-12 had “compensated” for a 6.1% drop in sales within the continent, Yara’s core market,
Realising the group’s 2016 ambitions was likely to mean “more merger and acquisition activity” with the value-added sector, an area in which Yara had “high potential” for reaping deal benefits, such as cost cuts, from takeovers.
Read more at Agrimoney
DONALDSONVILLE, La. — CF Industries, a major fertilizer maker, plans to build a $2.1 billion expansion at its nitrogen complex located here next to the Mississippi River in Ascension Parish.
The Illinois company also plans to build new plant near Sioux City, Iowa.
The capital improvements project in Louisiana is expected to generate 93 new jobs with an average salary of $56,500 plus benefits, state economic development officials said.
CF Industries, based in Deerfield, Ill., operates seven nitrogen facilities in the United States and Canada, and the Donaldsonville, La., site is the largest nitrogen complex in North America, the company said.
The site covers 1,400 acres and anhydrous ammonia, urea and urea ammonium nitrate — three nitrogen-based products heavily used by farmers and industry — are produced there.
The Louisiana Economic Development agency offered an incentive package to get CF Industries to expand, officials said. The incentives included a $3 million modernization tax credit over five years and a $2 million loan that will be forgiven if the company meets payroll targets.
“CF has been a fantastic neighbor to the city of Donaldsonville for many years,” Donaldsonville Mayor Leroy Sullivan Jr. said.
Ascension Parish President Tommy Martinez said the announcement was largest, single industrial deal ever in the history of Ascension Parish.
Read more at The Town Talk
By Ian Berry
—CF Industries announces $3.8 billion expansion
—Two projects include one in Lousiana and one in Iowa
—Iowa project largest capital investment in state history
—Other companies also expanding nitrogen fertilizer capacity
CHICAGO—CF Industries Inc. CF +2.77% plans to spend $3.8 billion to expand its nitrogen fertilizer capacity, becoming the latest company to take advantage of low natural gas costs and high grain prices.
The nitrogen fertilizer producer said its board has approved two expansion projects, one at its facility in Donaldsonville, La., and one in Port Neal, Iowa. The facilities are expected to come online in the second half of 2015 and 2016.
State and local officials in Louisiana have already provided an economic-incentives package to the company, while officials in Iowa are also “taking action” on incentives, CF Industries said. The Deerfield, Ill.-based company did not disclose details of the incentives, but the Iowa governor’s office said incentives for the Port Neal project included $1.5 million in direct assistance and tax credits of $22 million. The state’s economic development authority will consider further tax credits that would bring the total tax credit package to $57 million.
Read more at Market Watch
The $1.3 billion fertilizer plant being proposed by Egypt-based Orascom Construction Industries would be the first new U.S. nitrogen plant built in decades and comes at a time when domestic production — but not demand — has dropped dramatically, industry experts said.
“We have not built a new nitrogen plant since the early 1970s, and most those still operating are 1960s vintage,” said David Asbridge, president and senior economist of NPK Fertilizer Advisory Service, headquartered in Chesterfield, Mo.
“We were self sufficient in the U.S. up until about the year 2000. Then natural gas prices took a huge jump … and killed about 40 percent of our capacity. We couldn’t compete with the cheap natural gas in the Middle East.”
Kathy Mathers, vice president of public affairs for The Fertilizer Institute, said the cost of natural gas represents 70 percent to 90 percent of the cost of producing nitrogen. Natural gas is the heat source in the chemical process that produces nitrogen.
But when U.S. natural gas prices spiked beginning about five years ago, she said it drove many domestic producers to shut down portions of their operations.
“For plants that were either low margin or no margin — what companies did was shutter those plants or dismantle them and send them to places like China,” she said.
She estimated the loss in U.S. nitrogen capacity at as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2008.
Read more at Quad City Times
The first half of 2012 is in the rearview mirror, and investors are gearing up for what looks to be an action-packed ending. There are bound to be some big winners — and more than a few duds — no matter what happens in the United States and abroad.
Will your favorite stock have its victory lap as we hit the home stretch, or will it get lapped? First-half performances can hold some clues, so let’s look to the recent past to find out whether Terra Nitrogen (NYS: TNH) deserves a place in your portfolio going forward.
First-half recap
Terra has been on a wild ride in 2012, soaring through early planting season before falling apart in May. Still, shareholders have held on to some solid gains through the first half of the year, as you can see here:
Read more at Daily Finance
French nitrogen-fertilizer shipments fell 17 percent from July through February to the lowest level in at least four years, industry association Unifa said.
Nitrogen sales in France declined to 1.33 million metric tons in the first eight months of the year that started July 1 from 1.61 million tons a year earlier, Paris-based Unifa wrote in an e-mailed statement today.
France is the largest crop grower in the European Union, and the bloc’s biggest user of crop nutrients, according to the International Fertilizer Industry Association. Nitrogen is applied to plants to boost yields.
Potassium-fertilizer shipments in France fell 16 percent to 391,000 tons in May through February, while phosphate deliveries declined 20 percent to 328,000 tons, Unifa said.
The association tracks nitrogen sales on the basis of a year that starts July 1, while the marketing year for potassium and phosphorus begins May 1.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter atccarpenter2@bloomberg.net.
Agrium Inc. (NYSE:AGU - News) announced that it has begun the construction of its production expansion project at Agrium Advanced Technologies (:AAT) Environmentally Smart Nitrogen (:ESN) facility in New Madrid, Missouri. It is a $28 million project, which is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2012.
The new facility is expected to add another 136,000 tons to its output, bringing it to a targeted capacity level of 246,000 tons per year at the operations. After the expansion, total ESNcapacity for AAT will be 464,000 tonnes.
AAT ESN, a nitrogen-based fertilizer, is designed for higher yields. Agrium remains confident that the expansion will not only enable it to continue meeting the ESN demand in North America but also boost the growth of the unique product in the future.
Read more at Yahoo
Fertiliser The urea market has been firmer this week. The largest gains have been seen on the granular urea market due to European buyers covering short positions with trades in the region of $465 FOB, an increase of $30/tonne. In the UK specifically, traders have seen a shortage of available granular urea due to lower production for the Feb/March position. Prilled urea for March delivery is now also sold out as producers struggle to cover shorts. Ammonium nitrate has been stable for some weeks now, however on the back of the bullish urea market prices have started to now firm. The combination of the price correction in urea and demand increases for top up product may indeed turn this market around and GrowHow and Yara will continue to monitor prices going into Mar/April. Gleadell are currently offering Lithuanian AN at extremely competitive levels on a cost per unit basis when compared to national product so it is a good option if spreading to 24MT. The recent cold weather seen in the UK is likely to have delayed the spring application from mid-February by up to three weeks. In Europe, France is slowly coming back into the phosphate market but expected demand in Spain and Portugal is yet to show.
Nitrogen
PhosphatesPotash
The U.K. market for granular urea fertilizer, a source of crop-yield boosting nitrogen, has been“incredibly quiet” this week as buying was slow amid cold weather and snow, grain trader Gleadell Agriculture Ltd. said.
U.K. prices for ammonium nitrate, another nitrogen fertilizer, are “weak” as importers compete for farmers’orders, Gainsborough, England-based Gleadell wrote in a weeklymarket report on its website. The European market for phosphate fertilizer has also been affected by the cold snap, and price support “will be dictated by the weather,” the trader said.
Farmers typically apply fertilizer in granular form, and frozen fields across Europe will need to thaw before rain or irrigation can dissolve the nutrients for plant use. More than half of soils in northern Germany are frozen to a depth of 50 centimeters (20 inches) or more, according to the country’sweather office.
“Buying has been damped by plummeting sub-zero temperatures and applications expected in Germany and the U.K. in mid-February could now be delayed by up to three weeks,”Gleadell wrote.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
Yara International ASA, the largest publicly traded nitrogen-fertilizer maker, reported profit that beat estimates and raised its dividend as margins improved and the company booked a gain from the sale of units.
Net income more than doubled to 3.39 billion kroner ($585 million) from 1.56 billion kroner a year earlier, beating the 2.98 billion-krone estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Yara declared a dividend of 7 kroner a share, up from 5.5 kroner.
“Margins improved compared with last year, more than offsetting the impact of lower sales volumes,” Chief Executive Officer Joergen Ole Haslestad said in the statement. “Crop prices and farm margins remain healthy, and fertilizer deliveries will need to recover to avoid a decline in global grain stocks.”
Fertilizer prices have gained as rising food consumption spurs farmers to plant more crops. Yara’s sales rose 13 percent to 19.6 billion kroner in the quarter as lower volumes were balanced by higher margins, Yara said.
“Demand has normalized early in the first quarter,” Samir Bendriss, an analyst at Pareto Securities ASA, said in an e- mailed note. “This should alleviate volume concerns for 2012, especially given strong farmer margins.”
Read more at Bloomberg
Yara International raised hopes for the unsettled fertilizer sector by revealing a recovery in Europe’s nitrogen market – if not by enough to rule out a fall in deliveries over the whole 2011-12 season.
The world’s biggest nitrogen group said that urea prices, which had fallen during the “latter part” of the October-to-December quarter as buyers held back, “rebounded during January”.
Indeed, “activity levels have increased in global nitrogen markets during early first quarter,” the group said, noting a “pick up” in European deliveries of nitrogen fertilizers overall, and voicing optimism over prospects.
“Good farm margins indicate normal spring nitrogen consumption in the northern hemisphere,” Yara said.
Read more at Agrimoney
