Swedish fertilizer producer puts factory in northern Sweden on hold and prioritizes US
The Swedish company Cinis Fertilizer had plans to start production of mineral fertilizers in Skellefteå. Now, the company chooses to prioritize the construction of its planned facility in the US state of Kentucky over the facility in Northern Sweden.
Cinis Fertilizer is a Swedish green technology company aiming to produce fossil-free mineral fertilizer, potassium sulphate. This will be done by recycling industrial waste from the wood processing industry as well as from the production of electric car batteries.
In September, the company entered into an agreement with Ascend Elements, an American manufacturer of battery materials. The agreement includes the supply of sodium sulfate, a raw material for Cinis Fertilizer’s production of environmentally friendly mineral fertilizer.
Ascend Elements is currently building its largest facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. According to the agreement with Cinis Fertilizer, Ascend Elements will deliver up to 240,000 tonnes of sodium sulphate annually to Cinis Fertilizer from 2024.
The fertilizer company is now choosing to speed up its expansion in the USA. In order to accelerate the production of 300,000 tonnes of potassium sulfate in Kentucky per year, parts of the planning of the company’s plant in Skellefteå, with a production of 200,000 tonnes per year, have been pushed forward somewhat, the company writes.
Favorable conditions in the USA
“We want to keep up with the rapid development we see in the USA. Many people go there to participate in the country’s measures and package of measures that are being introduced over there,” says founder and CEO Jakob Liedberg of Cinis Fertilizer to Swedish SVT.
As known, the Biden administration has launched the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a financial support package for American companies intended to accelerate the development of green industry in the United States.
“The market for production of electric vehicle batteries is growing very fast in North America on the back of favourable government incentive programs introduced in the USA and Canada, thus many battery manufacturers are now shifting their focus from Europe to North America. Cinis Fertilizer wishes to take part in this growth and therefore we choose to focus on Hopkinsville as our second facility. This means that we are waiting a bit with the planning of the Skellefteå facility, and thus it will now be number three of our planned six facilities,” says Liedberg in a press release.
Liedberg believes, according to SVT, that the company still plans to build a factory in Skellefteå to be completed in 2026.
In Norway, the battery company Freyr has also chosen to put the construction of the Giga Arctic battery factory in Mo i Rana on hold and prioritize the construction of Giga America in the US state of Georgia. Freyr refers to the IRA’s consequences for their competitiveness.
Cinis Fertilizer is currently building its first production plant outside Örnsköldsvik in Sweden, with a planned start-up in 2024.
Originally published in Norwegian. Translated by Birgitte Annie Molid Martinussen.
High North News is an independent newspaper published by the High North Center at Nord University in Bodø, Norway.
