Uralkali plans to invest Rs 30K cr on capacity expansion

World's second-largest potash producer Uralkali today announced plans to invest nearly $6 billion (about Rs 30,000 crore) for ramping up its manufacturing capacity to 19 million tonne over the next 10 years.

The capacity expansion of Uralkali, a major potash exporter with 20% global market share, would help India as the country entirely depends on imports to meet the domestic demand of 6 million tonne.

Uralkali is looking at both greenfield and brownfield expansion to increase the production capacity in order to tap the rising global demand of potash.

"Total investment in Uralkali's expansion programme will amount to $5.8 billion by 2021," the company said in a statement.

 

The company, which at present has 10.6 million tonnes of annual production capacity, intends to add 4.5 million tonnes of capacity through brownfield and 5.3 million tonne per annum through greenfield expansion.

"The weighted average cost of the brownfield and greenfield expansion programme will amount to about $420 per tonne and about $750 per tonne of additional capacity respectively, which the company believes being the most cost effective in the potash industry," it said.

Uralkali said it would finance the strategic investment programme through internal accruals and debt.