US to lose 200,000t of phosphates post-Gustav/Ike

25 September 2008 17:05  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--Two US phosphate fertilizer producers may lose as much as 200,000 tonnes of output combined in September and October as a result of recent damage due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, US sources said on Thursday.

One producer, Agrifos, may be down for two months or even longer following flooding at its Pasadena, Texas, facility in the wake of Hurricane Ike, trader sources said.

The facility went down on 12 September. A two-month production outage would equate to 100,000 tonnes of lost phosphate production.

Mosaic confirmed that it restarted its Faustina, Louisiana facility this week and was now producing, although it was yet to reach full capacity.

With the plant’s capacity rated at around 1.6m tonnes/year, approximately 110,000-120,000 tonnes of production were estimated to have been lost.

The plant was shut down as a precaution at the end of August as a precaution in advance of Hurricane Gustav. Although damage to the plant was negligible, power outages in the area meant the plant took longer than expected to restart.

The news will be generally well received in terms of September inventory control, which sources had feared would rise on the back of lacklustre demand in the US domestic market as well as in Latin America.

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By: Mike Nash
+44 20 8652 3214

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