Fertilizer Maker Mosaic Loses Out as Iran War Roils Inputs
Phosphate rock loaded into railroad cars to be transported to the Mosaic Co. fertilizer chemical plant in Tampa, Florida.
Photographer: Jim Stem/Bloomberg
The war in Iran has sent fertilizer prices soaring, but that’s not creating a windfall for producer Mosaic Co.
The US’s biggest phosphate fertilizer producer struggled to stay profitable amid the Strait of Hormuz’s disruption to global flows of the sulfur needed to produce phosphate fertilizers, even as prices for its products rose from the prior year. About a fifth of the global phosphate trade and nearly half of the world’s sulfur trade depends on the route.