First US phosphate plant in decades planned amid global conflict

Farm cooperative CHS and fertiliser producer OCP North America are proposing a $450 million phosphate fertiliser plant in Louisiana, bolstering domestic supplies as global conflicts have increasingly thwarted the flow of foreign crop nutrients.

The proposed plant in Waggaman, Louisiana, the first of its kind in the US in over four decades, would produce more than a million tonnes of phosphate-based fertiliser annually, according to a Wednesday press release.

The US produced about 5 million metric tonnes of finished phosphate fertilisers in 2024, according to Bloomberg Green Markets.

The announcement comes as global fertiliser markets have been roiled by geopolitical conflict, first in Russia and Ukraine and then in the Middle East.

Trade disruptions have elevated prices for the key crop nutrients and stoked concerns in the US about food security. The facility could reduce US dependency on imported phosphate fertilisers by more than 48%, according to the release.

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“We need to clap real loud for that. That is a really big deal,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said of the plant at an event in Louisiana on Wednesday.

The facility will provide “true competition for the American farmer’s dollar as a new entry comes to play to battle for their business”, deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said at the event.

The US Department of Agriculture has raised concerns about the consolidation of US fertiliser production and the impact of higher prices for farmers, prompting antitrust scrutiny of the industry.

The plant also gives Morocco’s OCP Group more exposure to the US market. Mosaic Co, the US’s largest phosphate producer, has backed duties on Moroccan fertilisers that it says are being sold to the US at below-market prices.

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Those levies, which had been in place for about five years, were paused by the White House in June as the administration sought to aid the farm economy.

Read: Morocco – a top fertiliser producer – could hold a key to the world’s food supply

OCP will supply phosphoric acid to the facility, according to the statement. Morocco has the largest phosphate rock reserves in the world. Fertiliser products will be distributed through OCP’s North American subsidiary and CHS.

Construction is expected to take up to two years, pending project-related and funding approvals.

Diammonium phosphate prices in New Orleans earlier in August reached the highest price in about a year, though they have since pared back some, according to Bloomberg Green Markets data as of last Friday.

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