EuroChem Positive on Potash Amid Uralkali-Belarus Dispute

OAO EuroChem, the Russian fertilizer maker controlled by billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, said its planned potash mines remain viable even as the collapse of OAO Uralkali’s partnership with Belarus sends prices lower.

“Uralkali’s trading-venture feud won’t hurt the economics of our potash projects,” Andrey Ilyin, EuroChem’s chief financial officer, said in an interview in Moscow yesterday. The company intends to go from having zero potash output to 8 million metric tons a year within a decade, about 60 percent of the current capacity at Uralkali, the world’s biggest producer.