Will European farmers run out of fertiliser?
The surge in natural gas prices, accentuated by the war in Ukraine, weighs on the production of nitrogen fertilizers.
The majority of these fertilizers are made from ammonia, obtained by combining nitrogen from the air and hydrogen from natural gas.
This hydrocarbon represents up to three quarters of the manufacturing costs of ammonia.
“At the current gas price, the production costs of nitrogen fertilizers are too high for European manufacturers,”
explains Thapliyal Deepika, an analyst at Icis.
For example, it takes more than 2000 dollars to produce a ton of ammonia.
An amount 70% higher than the selling price of fertilizers on the market.
In order not to lose money, the industrialists of the Old Continent come, often without saying it, to reduce their production of fertilizers by about half, according to estimates by experts in the sector.
The list of shutdown factories continues to grow.
At the end of July, the giant…
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