Sep 21, 2010
New Urea Factory Planned for the State of Parana
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
A group of co-ops in Parana will announce this week the formation of a new consortium that will build a new urea factory in the state with the capacity of producing 300,000 tons of urea per year. The total investment is expected to be approximately US$ 300 million and the factory will generate 300 new jobs and hopefully make the state nearly auto sufficient in urea production.
The farmers in the state of Parana use approximately 900,000 tons of urea per year and this new factory, in conjunction with an existing factory, will almost meet the needs of the farmers in the state.
The plant would be built by the Chinese company Chengda which builds chemical plants and oil platforms worldwide and the technology used in the plant will be from another Chinese company, Sichuan, which is a primary producer of urea and agrichemicals in China.
The new factory is part of Brazil's overall plan to be auto sufficient in fertilizer production with ten years. The high fertilizer prices of a few years ago, convinced Brazilian officials that cannot be at the mercy of a few international fertilizer companies for such an vital component of their agricultural economy. As a result, the government is exploring both on land and off shore for new phosphorus and potassium deposits as well as building new nitrogen plants using natural gas from Bolivia.
The consortium of co-ops took shape in 2009 under the name National Agraindustrial Cooperative and is composed of the following cooperatives: Agraria, Agropar, Batavo, Bom Jesus, C.Vale, Capal, Castrolanda, Cocari, Codepa, Cofercatu, Coopagricola, Coopermibra, Cooperval, Copacol, Copagra, Copagril. Lar, Nova Produtiva, and Unicastro.