As Saskatchewan continues to navigate the ever-changing global landscape of energy and agriculture, Nutrien is increasing its fertilizer production in a big way.
Interim president Ken Seitz said Nutrien is ramping up it’s annual potash production to 18 million tons by 2025.
“The challenge of feeding a growing world has never been clearer as global supply constraints have contributed to higher commodity prices and escalated concerns for global food security,” said Seitz in a press release.
“There is no simple or fast solution to overcome this challenge and we see potential for multi-year strength in agriculture and crop input market fundamentals.”
This would represent an increase of more than 5 million tons, or 40 per cent compared to Nutrien’s 2020 production.
“Nutrien’s integrated business is best positioned to respond to these supply challenges and help sustainably feed a growing world,” said Seitz.
“We are safely bringing on additional low-cost potash and nitrogen production from our existing facilities, while delivering the products, services and solutions growers need through our leading global retail network.”
Kayla Fitzpatrick, the director of communications for Fertilizer Canada, said supply issues have come from a number of different issues over the last year.
“Since 2021 we have seen a bit of a tighter market for fertilizer,” said Fitzpatrick. “It’s been due to a multitude of factors from geopolitical to weather events. So we’re kind of experiencing all of those factors that are now compounded with the war in Ukraine.”
With low yields last year, farmers are turning to fertilizer to increase production.
“Part of this has also been compounded by the harvest that we saw last year,” said Fitzpatrick.
“There was a lot of weather events that impacted the quality of harvest. This year there’s a strong emphasis on having this high yields and quality product to make up for that, which has also been a factor.”
Fitzpatrick said Nutrien’s increase in production is a long-term solution, and will hopefully help with supplies for the global market as well as domestic
As part of the increased production, Nutrien is also hiring 350 people to expand underground mining and mine development, as well as storage and load-out capacity.
Nutrien has also begun work on advancing the previously announced expansion projects to add 500,000 tons of capacity to the end of 2025.
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