News

June 19, 2008

A New Kazakh Boom – This Time Fertilisers

By Sally White

Harbinger of a maturing bull market, or an indication of a new boom to come? Newsflow from Central Asia is not always among the best, but the word is that a new industry is growing there rapidly. This time it’s fertilisers. There is even a Kazakhstan fertiliser company lining up a London listing.

Kazakhstan was historically, in Soviet Union days, a huge fertiliser supplier across the whole range of products. There was a large operation there processing phosphate ore to produce yellow phosphorus which accounted for over 90 per cent of total Soviet output. It also produced chemical fertilisers and potash.

So it’s not for nothing that the Abu Dhabi government-owned IPIC is planning to spend a mooted US$5-6billion on developing chemical and fertilisers there. And the Russians...