NIGERIA – OCP Africa, a subsidiary of a leading global provider of phosphate and its derivatives in the region OCP Group, has inaugurated its first ultramodern fertilizer blending plant on the continent in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria worth approximately US$13m.

The state-of-the-art 10-hectare facility has a production capacity of 120 tonnes per hour with a 25,000 tonnes storage unit.

It also features a modern training facility, a laboratory equipped with advanced analytical techniques for quality control and soil analysis, and a model farm for performing agronomic trials and farmer training.

Other than being a production base, the new unit will also serve as an excellence center for sharing experiences, knowledge, and know-how between OCP Group and stakeholders in the agricultural sector in Nigeria.

“This facility is not only for the production of fertilizers, but also to have a profound impact on the agricultural value chain of the country.

“OCP Africa is committed to contributing to the transformation of the food system on the continent, and Nigeria represents a strategic pole for our group,” said OCP Africa CEO Mohamed Anouar Jamali.

The new plant is one of three planned fertilizer blending units in Nigeria by OCP Africa, with the other two now under construction in Ogun and Sokoto.

Upon completion of the remaining two blending plants, OCP will have a combined fertilizer blending capacity of 500,000 metric tons. This is in addition to the planned US$1.4 billion fertilizer plant project in Akwa Ibom State.

The developmental projects are part of the “Presidential Fertilizer Initiative” (PFI), geared towards enhancing production local production of fertilizer in Nigeria while leveraging on readily available natural resources and Moroccan phosphate.

This collaboration spans the entire agricultural value chain, from implementing fertilizer solutions tailored to local soils and crops, to improving the availability of fertilizers at competitive prices on the local market, through the implementation of support measures for Nigerian farmers and the contribution to the development of the logistics chain and the strengthening of the local distribution network.

With the finalization of the projects, Nigeria will turn into a fertilizer exporting hub as earlier in the year, Dangote Group inaugurated a US$2.5 billion fertilizer plant with a production capacity of 3 million metric tons annually of urea fertilizer.

Nigeria’s fertilizer utilization is set at 5 to 7 million metric tonnes per annum with the current level of consumption in the country totaling about 1.5 million metric tonnes.

The country has a low fertilizer utilization rate compared to other countries according to the World Bank, with the West African nation consuming around 20 kg of fertilizer per hectare of arable land in 2018, compared with 73 kg in South Africa and 393 kg in China.

The establishment of the facilities happened at an opportune time when the global fertilizer market has been jolted by the Ukraine-Russia war.

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