Over the recent five years, PhosAgro Group has invested more than RUB 5 billion in the Volkhov chemical cluster considerably expanding its product range and bolstering output by more than 60%. Now, its product portfolio includes 17 sodium tripolyphosphate grades and at least 10 fertilizer grades (vs two products on offer when the company joined PhosAgro Group).
We built new wet-process phosphoric acid capacities, state-of-the-art storage facilities and packaging lines (for fertilizers and sodium tripolyphosphate), and ramped up aluminium sulphate capacities (a high-performance coagulant used in the Leningrad Region for water treatment).
Immediately after the company became part of PhosAgro Group, we started to build wastewater treatment facilities, and adopted an environmental protection programme moving the site to closed water treatment in 2018. Environmental investments amounted to RUB 500 million in 2018–2019 alone.
The Volkhov Branch is developing production technology for new fertilizer grades therefore being a test bed for the Group’s R&D and innovations.
A new NРКS and РКS facility with a capacity of 100 ktpa was created in 2014. Not only it increased gross output, but also expanded the product portfolio and helped enter into new markets by offering an innovative product line that includes various NPKS and РКS fertilizer grades based on ammonia-free potassium chloride.
Investment exceeded RUB 400 million.
A new extraction unit of 105 ktpa of Р2О5 was launched in 2017. This maximised fertilizer and sodium tripolyphosphate output, and eliminated risks relating to the failure of obsolete extractors.
Investments exceeded RUB 1 billion.
In 2018, PhosAgro announced the launch of a new investment project, “Strategic development of the Volkhov branch of Apatit JSC for the period until 2025”.
Total investment: over RUB 34 billion.
Development of the Volkhov branch of Apatit JSC has led to the creation of more than 700 jobs, half of which are in engineering.
Modernisation of the production facilities has essentially created a new plant with an annual capacity of more than 1.1 million tonnes of sulphuric acid, more than 500 thousand tonnes of phosphoric acid and over 1 million tonnes of monoammonium phosphate, including 43.5 thousand tonnes of water-soluble monoammonium phosphate.
In 2023, the site reached its design capacity, and the quantity of finished products increased more than fourfold.
Support infrastructure for the new production facilities has been created or upgraded, including a railway hub, storage facilities for raw materials (apatite concentrate, sulphuric acid, ammonia and mineral fertilizers), a power generation and distribution system, and a chemical water treatment plant.
The investment project was implemented using the best available technologies and solutions from leading Russian companies and institutes, including project developments from the Samoilov Scientific Research Institute for Fertilizers and Insectofungicides (NIUIF), Russia’s only research institute in the field of agrochemicals and one of Europe’s leading institutions in the field.