potash sales increase

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K+S May Raise Potash Target as Farmers Seen Increasing Orders
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By Richard Weiss

April 22 (Bloomberg) -- K+S AG, Europes largest potash producer, has received indications that farmers are returning to more usual levels of fertilizer use, potentially taking the company closer to raising its output targets for the crop nutrient.

Board member Joachim Felker met some distributors on April 19 and they told him farmers are ordering volumes in a satisfying fashion, spokesman Michael Wudonig said.

A decision on whether to increase the current 6 million-ton goal may be announced on May 11, when K+S is scheduled to report first-quarter numbers, Felker said in March. Any decision will depend on farmers actually applying fertilizers, as opposed to distributers only restocking.

These were selective opinions only, not fit to state a general trend, Wudonig said. K+S sold 4.35 million metric tons of potash and magnesium products in 2009, down from 7 million tons the prior year.

Global potash sales fell more than 40 percent to an estimated 32 million metric tons in 2009 in the biggest drop in demand on record, the company said in a presentation today.

Sales should recover by 40 percent this year to 45 million metric tons as soils become more depleted of nutrients and as recovering economies makes credit easier to access for farmers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at [email protected].
Last Updated: April 22, 2010 08:20 EDT