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New Fertecon report ranks and profiles the world's 40
biggest ammonia buyers
We have compiled a list of what we think are the world's forty
biggest buyers of ammonia in 2019 and we look at them in the
context of the industries they are in, as well geographically.
The focus of our report is not the traders, trader-producers or
terminal operators which fill the majority of the places in our top
10 and who are regularly covered in Fertecon's Ammonia Outlook
reports, but what we would define as the "true" end-users, although
this turns out to be quite a subjective exercise. If a company has
a 30% or 50% share in the owner ship of an ammonia plant and yet
off-takes the full volume is that a purchase of the full volume, or
a pro-rated volume? It probably depends on individual agreements
for such a shareholding but in discussing traders purchase volumes
we aim to show the volume they move as well as the volume they say
they buy.
The biggest ammonia buyer in 2019 by quite a significant margin,
is Trammo with close to 3 million t traded. We include Trammo in
our first section on what we call pure traders, along with
Mitsubishi (number 6 on our list) and Mitsui (8). All three of
these companies have ammonia off-take agreements and Mitsubishi is
a 30% owner of an ammonia plant, but we think it is more trading
than producing. We do not include to our list those traders who
sell their own produced ammonia (Nutrien, Sabic, Parna Raya) or
sell on behalf or on long term agreement with only one producer,
such as Ameropa (Togliatti), Muntajat (QAFCO), Raintrade (Iranian
producers). Some of these are spot buyers but not in 2019 for
volumes large enough to count in our ranking.
In the following section on producer traders we have Yara the
second biggest ammonia buyer in the world and the second biggest
producer! We also cover BASF (10) and Koch Industries (13) in this
grouping.
Our third grouping of trader buyers is for the terminal
operators. LFC is number 9 on our list of top buyers but only uses
abut 20,000t/y ammonia itself. In contrast the other big Korea
importer-NCC (11) is a substantial user in its own right, although
still using less than 50% of the volume it imports. Our third
terminal operator is difficult to pin down. Hengrun-Gemoil (22).
Hengrun has the lease on the ammonia tanks in Zhanjiang, and is a
major seller of the ammonia imported, but most if not all of the
buying for import into these tanks is handled by its partner
Gemoil.
Sixteen of our top ammonia buyers are primarily fertilizer
producers with the biggest buyers focused on ammonium phosphate
fertilizer production ie OCP (3), Mosaic (4), IFFCO (5), CIL (12),
Yuntianhua (26) and JPMC (38). Inevitably there is some mixing, and
fertilizer producers can be industrial nitrogen producers and-as in
the case of Pemex (7) - also significant ammonia traders. We should
also stress that there is double counting in these numbers, eg with
Trammo buying to sell to another buyer in our list. Besides Pemex,
our other mixed fertilizer buyers are Toros (16), Fertiberia (24),
Agropolychim (27), Bagfas (31), TFC (34) and Lovochemie (37).
After Fertilizers we look at the various industrial nitrogen
sectors-non fertilizer users of ammonia. We have five of our top
buyers mainly producing caprolactam: Highsun (17), Ube (19),
Lanxess (23), CPDC (28) and Capro Corp. (39). It is also important
to point out BASF, listed above as a producer - trader, is the
second biggest caprolactam producer in the world and one of the
leading producers of both MDI-TDI and Ethanolamines, products which
consume ammonia and feature later in this report.
Our report has four buyers mainly producing acrylonitrile: INEOS
(15), Asahi Kasei (14), Ascend (18) and Shanghai Secco (35). Both
Acrylonitrile and especially caprolactam producers can and do
produce fertilizer, chiefly ammonium sulphate, in significant
volumes, but we will still refer to these as non-fertilizer
producers.
Three of our top companies are producers of explosive grade
ammonium nitrate (EGAN): ENAEX (21), Orica (25) and CSBP (33), also
a fertilizer producer. Finally, a threesome of ammonia buyers with
their own distinct fields: Huchems (20) produces nitric acid, which
is mostly used in the production of MDI/TDI; Evonik (30) features
in our list because of its purchase of ammonia for a variety of
products, including methionine. We have this buyer within a section
on ammonia use in amino acids production. Our last buyer,
Butachimie (40) produces ADN but is mentioned in our section on
Koch, which owns Invista, a major ADN producer, and a 50% owner of
Butachimie, together with BASF.
We have further tried to sub-divide these buyers on a
geographical basis, so we have grouped buyers in Korea, India,
Turkey and Taiwan.
About the Author
Peter Shaddick has been involved in the fertilizer and
fertilizer raw material industry since 1974. He started work at
British Sulphur Corp. as a contributor to the monthly magazine
Fertilizer International, later going on to become its editor. In
1977 he helped develop the first weekly price reports for ammonia
and urea, then sent out by telex, and later extended these to cover
a wider range of fertilizer products. In early 1981 he moved to
Singapore to work for Transammonia AG, assisting in sales of
ammonia, sulphur and various fertilizers in south-east and east
Asia from and including the Indian sub-continent. In 1993 he left
Transammonia and formed his own company to broker and trade
fertilizers in the same region. In 1999 he partnered with Fertecon
to author a report on the Vietnam fertilizer market and later that
year he was recruited by Fertecon on a part time basis to
contribute market information on the region for all the fertilizer
and fertilizer raw materials handled by Fertecon. In 2012 he
authored a report for Fertecon on the Laos potash industry. He
continues to live in Singapore and to work with Fertecon on a part
time basis, mostly focused on reporting the urea and ammonia
markets of Asia and Oceania, east of India.
