Potash is perhaps the world’s most strategic fertilizer. Mineable deposits are concentrated in a handful of countries, it cannot be synthesized, and crop yields suffer badly without it.
Russia-based Uralkali, the world’s largest potash producer, turned the global potash market on its head when it announced in late July 2013 it would market potash independently and stop selling through the Belarus Potash Company (“BPC”) marketing structure it previously used to coordinate exports and production.
Prior to Uralkali’s move, two major global marketers—BPC and Canada’s Canpotex—controlled around 70% of potash volume traded worldwide, which helped constrain supply and keep prices high.
Uralkali aims to boost its market share in China, where it is estimated that each 10 kilos of pork consumed requires 1 kilo of potash to produce, since Chinese pigs are increasingly fed with potash-hungry corn and soybeans. Similarly, every 44kg of rice eaten in China is thought to require 1 kg of potash to grow, with application intensity likely to rise in the year to come as China runs short of arable land and seeks to produce more grain from a static land area. Uralkali exported approximately 2 million tons of potash to China in 2012—primarily by rail—and now wants to increase this to 2.5 million tons per year, approximately 22% of China’s forecast 2013 potash demand.
China and India are the world’s largest and fourth largest consumers of potash, respectively, yet farmers in both countries still under-fertilize because potash has often been too expensive for them.
This has taken a sizeable toll in the form of lost grain productivity and helps make both China and India more dependent on imported grains.
Academic studies show farmers in both China and India can significantly increase yields of wheat, rice, and corn by using more potash—achieving gains of as much as 15-20% in areas such as Northern China where intensive farming and improper fertilizer use has depleted soil potassium levels.
Potash—perhaps even more so than oil—may emerge as a commodity space where China and India compete head-to-head to secure new supplies that both ensure availability of this critical fertilizer and also confer bargaining leverage when Chinese and Indian buyers negotiate with foreign potash suppliers in Russia and Canada.
Potential potash mine buyers in China and India will feel pressure to move quickly because the market gyrations Uralkali set in motion will likely drive potash prices up again. As lower prices unleash pent-up demand for potash, farmers in price-sensitive emerging markets such as India and China will reap larger crops. Once more intensive potash use takes hold on farms in emerging markets and developed world farmers also boost application, there is a real chance that structural shortages will begin to re-emerge and prices will once again start to climb.
Indeed, we estimate that based on cultivated land area and academic research on the ideal soil potassium level for growing wheat and corn, applying the necessary potash volumes on the North China Plain alone could increase global demand by more than 5%. Multiplied across farming regions in China, India, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, this increased application could dramatically increase potash demand and cause prices to spike.
Because farmers can apply and withhold potash over time to manage soil inventories of potassium, the dynamic discussed above will likely require 3-5 years to fully manifest itself. When it does, it will usher in a prolonged period of price volatility that in some ways reinforces itself by making investors more hesitant to enter new projects. The winners in this environment will be those who can put potash on the market more cheaply than most other producers. Ethiopian suppliers are very competitive in this respect, with their low production costs and close proximity to the world’s largest potash consumers.
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