Meat packing giant JBS is starting production at a new, 150,000 tonnes-per-annum fertiliser plant near São Paulo, it has announced, as it attempts to ease Brazil’s reliance on imported fertiliser.
JBS, which includes Moy Park and Pilgrim’s Pride among its brands, said its new fertiliser factory, Campo Forte Fertilizantes, would recycle “residues” from its regular meat packing operations.
One of the world’s biggest agricultural producers and a leading exporter of coffee, sugar, soy and corn, Brazil last year sourced the vast majority of its fertiliser from abroad.
“Currently, 87% of the volume of fertilisers consumed in Brazil come from import,” said Susana Carvalho, executive director at JBS Novos Negócios. Campo Forte Fertilizantes would prove “a major opportunity for the company expansion” she added.
The facility’s “circular” production system would mean “generating a product with added value, from a highly technological and sustainable industrial process”.
It comes after global fertiliser prices surged in the wake of pandemic-related trade disruptions. By early February, they were triple the cost seen in early 2021, according to AHDB.
The invasion last month of Ukraine by Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas, Russia, prompted major fertiliser makers, including Norway’s Yara, to announce production cuts – as the price of gas, which is needed to make synthetic fertiliser, soared in the wake of the conflict.
