France announces low carbon fertilisers plant to reduce dependence on Russian imports

French president Emmanuel Macron announced the project aiming at producing decarbonised nitrogenous fertilisers at the “Choose France” summit, an annual meeting of international business leaders at the Château de Versailles, on Monday 13 May.

“This is a world first for the decarbonisation of our agriculture and for our food sovereignty, which will make it possible to avoid the emission of nearly one million tonnes of CO2 per year, and to reduce our imports of nitrogen fertilisers by 30%”, Minister Delegate for Industry and Energy Roland Lescure said in an interview with La Tribune.

Farmers’ access to this kind of fertilisers has been a major issue since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, as Russia and Belarus together are the biggest suppliers to the EU.

These products heavily rely on natural gas and have become an emblem of the EU’s dependence on Moscow.

According to a recent Eurostat report, liquified natural gas and fertilisers are the only Russian imports that are not decreasing. Although the trend is downwards this year, nitrogen-based fertilisers still account for almost a third of total EU imports.

A multinational effort

Thanks to an EU consortium of founding investors, the Spanish company FertigHy chose France to position itself as a leader in low-carbon fertilisers production.

The consortium consists of manufacturers from the energy and agri-food sectors, including Spanish solar energy specialist RIC Energy, Italian engineering firm Maire Tecnimont, Germany’s Siemens Financial Services, French agricultural trading group In Vivo, the Soufflet group, and Dutch brewer Heineken.

This multinational composition pushed some French media to rename the project the ‘Airbus of fertilisers’, inspired by the name of the multinational aerospace consortium.

The project is worth €1.3 billion in capital expenditure and aims at producing annually 500,000 tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser from 2030 in a plant in the Hauts de France region. Construction is due to start in 2027.

According to FertigHy, the factory will meet around 10% of consumption of France’s agricultural sector. After the French plant, FertigHy plans to build a second one in Spain.

Fertiliser production is energy intensive, and FertigHy’s ambition is to align with the EU’s decarbonisation targets and with the European fertiliser strategy, presented in November 2022.

The document urged the EU to break away from dependence on Russian fertilisers, by investing in innovation on made-in-Europe production and developing alternatives using chemical nitrogen.

FertigHy wants to replace hydrogen – a key element in the production of nitrogen fertilisers – currently produced from natural gas with hydrogen produced by electricity.

Initially planned for Spain, the plant will be built in France and will use electricity generated from nuclear and renewable sources, emitting reduced levels of CO2.

“Running on renewable and low-carbon electricity, this plant is a decisive step towards the production of European-made fertilisers and towards reducing imports of mineral nitrogen fertilisers,” said the FertigHy CEO José Antonio de las Heras in a press release.

In his speech on Europe at the Sorbonne on 25 April, Emmanuel Macron hinted at the project, announcing that “the era when Europe bought its energy and fertilisers from Russia […] is over.”

EU increasingly food dependent on Russia, fertiliser company CEO warns

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[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Rajnish Singh]

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