The sulphur facility is another step in Northern Nutrients’ long-term strategy to bring new sustainable fertilizer technologies to Western Canadian farmers.
Northern Nutrients is owned by Ross Guenther, along with Matt and Rob Owens of Emerge Ag Solutions at Eston.
Guenther says for three years, they've been importing the patented Shell sulphur urea into North America, and have now decided to build their own facility.
"This facility will be located about five kilometres east of Saskatoon on Highway 16 in the East Floral Industrial Park. What this facility will be is a sulphur enhanced urea facility to make mainly high analysis, sulphur fertilizer for the Western Canadian and then U-S market as well."
Work on the site will begin next month, with the facility expected to be operational in 2022.
The plant which will cost upwards of $25 Million to build and will utilize the Shell Thiogro technology, a patented process that micronizes elemental sulphur which makes it quicker for the product to be available to the plant.
Guenther says they've been commercially selling this technology in Western Canada and this product for three years now.
"The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive in terms of using less product versus the traditional sulphur products on the marketplace. As well as having a product that's low salt, and basically better for the soils and less toxic to the seed if placed close to the seed. So it saved farmers time, it's allowed retailers to actually use up less storage space because of the high concentration and generally been very, very positive product introduction to the Western Canadian market with retention rates of over 90%."
He notes another great part of bringing the facility to Saskatchewan is they'll be able to support some local raw material suppliers.
"Such as the molten sulphur, available in both Regina and Lloydminster, and urea manufacturers in Western Canada we can help support as those are the two key raw materials for this process."
He says one of the key things they thought about in deciding to build the facility was security of supply.
"Just to be able to, for the growers in the region, our retail partners to know that the product would always be close to home and readily available, versus the logistical challenges sometimes of bringing the product halfway around the world. So it's really boiled down to the confidence in the supply chain and knowing that the products always going to be there when our growers need it."
Elemental sulphur is key to many parts of building a healthy plant throughout the growing season, sulphur plays a very key function, especially for canola crops.
"I think it's going to be absolutely key to have the local access to a high quality sulphur urea fertilizer." Guenther says "It's going to be something that's going to have fundamentally positive effects on growers are for decades to come. With the addition of these new canola crushing plants in Saskatchewan that are proposed, we think growers are going to continue to want to push the envelope on canola yields and with that comes more sulphur use. And we're going to be right there to work with our retail partners and growers to help them push yields and offer a local supply of a high quality product."
Curtis Bowditch from Tisdale has been using the sulphur-enhanced urea for three years.
He says the seed safety of the product was a game changer for their farm and allows them to get both the phosphorus and sulphur in the seed-row for the first time, making it a huge time saver.
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