Kribhco to set up fertilizer plant with Morocco firm

NEW DELHI, 22 October 2016 : India’s fertiliser co-operative, Kribhco has announced that they are entering into a 50:50 joint venture to develop a large-scale greenfield NPK fertilizer plant in Krishnapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India.

The new plant for manufacturing phosphatic fertilisers will be set up with an investment of $230 million (Rs 1,500 crore) and will have an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tonnes of NPK fertilizers.

Over 288 acres of land has been acquired 288 for this project. The work on this plant will start from April 2017 and commercial production will commence from April 2019.

Speaking on this, Indian Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Mansukhbhai Mandaviya said the JV will strengthen relationship between the two countries and also benefit Indian farmers.

The minister said, meanwhile, the country's urea import will reduce following 100 per cent neem-coating of this key nutrient.

OCP is the largest phosphate producer in the world and a leading global fertiliser player.

Win-win partnership

Commenting on the announcement, OCP’s Chairman and CEO Mostafa Terrab said, “This partnership is designed to be truly a win-win project for all the stakeholders’ involved but foremost for India’s agriculture and particularly for Indian farmers.”

“We believe large scale local investments designed to respond to farmers’ specific needs is the key ingredient to successful agricultural ecosystem development. As one of the major cooperatives in India, Kribhco is an excellent partner to develop a farmer-oriented agricultural input joint-venture,” Terrab stressed.

Kribhco Chairman, Dr. Chandra Pal Singh said, “Proposed JV is a unique example of global cooperation between two leading organizations joining hands for making available phosphate-based fertilizer products to Indian farmers by channelizing their respective strengths.”

“Farmers of the country shall benefit with continued supply of various NPK grade products based on best quality phosphate in the world,” Singh emphasised.

While speaking on the occasion, Kribhco managing director, N. Sambasiva Rao said that NPK grade of fertilizer are very important for balance fertilization of soil and nutrition to the crop according to its requirement.

Investment in Morocco

“We are in discussion with OCP. We hope to finalise our investment in Morocco soon,” Rao said, adding further that the country currently import 1 million tonnes of NPK fertilisers out of the total domestic demand of 9 million tonnes, and Kribco is setting up this plant to fill this gap.

He further added that the proposed project will unlock the hidden value of the soil and crop of farmers and will add to their all-round prosperity.

Rao said this would be the company's first non-urea plant in the country. It has two plants with an annual capacity of 3.2 million tonnes of urea. That apart, the company gets 1 million tonnes of urea from its joint venture project in Oman.

OCP-Kribhco joint-venture is expected to be the first step in a broader strategic cooperation between both groups that could include Kribhco’s investment in a phosphoric acid unit in Morocco.