March 23, 2011
Dr. Ernst Andres, Board of Management Marketing and Distribution of K+S KALI GmbH attended the last International conference CIS Fertilizers in Odessa, Ukraine. There he summarised the current situation and developments of the world market for potash fertilisers.
In short, Dr. Ernst Andres pointed out following conclusions in his presentation:
In the following, the editors summarise the main facts of the presentation “The World Market for Potash Fertilisers: What can we expect in the years 2010 and 2011?“ of Dr. Ernst Andres, Board of Management Marketing and Distribution of K+S KALI GmbH.
The structure of the K+S Group is based on the core business sectors fertilisers and salt.
The K+S Group is one of the world's leading suppliers of standard and speciality fertilisers. In the salt business, K+S is the world’s leading producer with sites in Europe as well as North and South America. K+S offers a comprehensive range of goods and services for agriculture, industry, and private consumers which provides growth opportunities in virtually every sphere of daily life. The K+S Group employs more than 15,000 people.
K+S KALI GmbH is the legal entity for the potash and magnesium business segment of the K+S group.
K+S KALI GmbH extracts crude potash and magnesium salts from six mines in Germany. These salts form the basis for the production of a large variety of fertilisers. In addition, these crude salts are also processed into products for technical, industrial and pharmaceutical applications. The deposits also contain magnesium and sulphur, which are particularly suitable for the production of specialities.
In 2009 the haulage of crude salt was historically low, because of low potash sales due to the financial and economical crisis which led to a strong decrease of farm prices for agricultural products and reduced potash consumption. Regular crude salt hauling is about 37 Mio. t as shown by the figures of 2008 with sales of about 7.6 Mio. t.
Environmentally friendly production is a challenge for the potash Industry. For centuries K+S has reached highest efficiency in utilisation of resources:
K+S KALI GmbH is not just a potash producer. The composition of the crude salt deposits makes the difference to other producers as they consist of potassium chloride and magnesium sulphate. This allows to produce a broad portfolio of tailor made products for various applications in the segments of fertiliser, industrial products, health care & food and animal feed.
The product portfolio offers a variety of potash and magnesium products and includes the main potash product potassium chloride but also fertiliser specialities with amongst others magnesium, sodium and sulphur as additional nutrients. In addition to that K+S KALI GmbH offers a range of potash and magnesium products for industrial applications. The portfolio differentiates the products for industrial applications in the two further segments health care & food and animal feed.
The global challenge is to feed a growing world population with less available arable land per capita. This means that yield per ha has to be increased. Therefore fertiliser use has to be enhanced.
The demand for biofuels will continue to grow.
The fundamentals of the agricultural markets are positive: Commodity prices exceed their 2006 levels and are forecast to grow further. Higher commodity prices will create additional fertiliser demand.
The 7th International conference CIS Fertilizers took place in Odessa, Ukraine last year in November. One of the speakers was Dr. Ernst Andres, Board of Management Marketing and Distribution of K+S KALI GmbH. He summarised the current situation and developments of the world market for potash fertilisers.
