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Fertiliser shortage: Nutrien Ag Solutions managing director Rob Clayton balances scramble for ag inputs

Nutrien Ag Solutions managing director Rob Clayton on sustainability shifting from a threat to farmers to a real opportunity.

 

A GLOBAL scramble for key agriculture inputs in the face of supply chain and production constraints has seen some Australian retailers more than double the size of their stockpiles heading into the crucial winter cropping season.

 

Nutrien Ag Solutions managing director Rob Clayton told The Weekly Times the rush for inputs, including key fertilisers, had pushed prices to decade highs and forced a rethink in the way the business sources product.

 

“We’ve had to stage product much earlier than we have in the past,” Mr Clayton said. “Right now (we) have about a billion dollars’ worth of stock sitting (in warehouses), where we would normally have about half of that.”

 

Mr Clayton said there was a need for Australian agriculture to get in front of supply chain issues, with calls from some sectors for more domestic production of inputs to counter rising costs and a massive blowout in transit times.

 

“It is a lot longer supply chain channel now than it was before,” Mr Clayton said.

 

“For instance, product out of China from the first phone call to when that product arrives was usually around 30-40 days but now it is 120-150 days.”

 

Thomas Elder Markets’ analyst Andrew Whitelaw said an increasing number of nations around the world were looking to shore up supplies of key inputs through domestic production.

 

He said a combination of factors were leading to the reduced global supply, including the crisis in Ukraine, which had seen sanctions imposed on Russia. He said while Australia wasn’t a huge importer of fertiliser from Russia, other nations were, which meant they had been forced to look to other markets to secure supply.

 

Mr Whitelaw said fertiliser production facilities being planned for South Australia and Western Australia could end up “producing more fertiliser than we need in Australia by a country mile”.

 

“I think the one thing to remember, though, is that any of these plants, if they get built, which is probably still a big if, it’s not going to be until 2026, so it is not going to fix any of our immediate problems,” he said.

 

Source: James Wagstaff, The Weekly Times, 19 April 2022

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