Cinis Fertilizer accelerates the expansion in the USA and prioritizes its production facility in Kentucky

Date:11-13-2023

Cinis Fertilizer has decided to prioritize the construction of its planned facility in Kentucky before the facility in Skellefteå, Sweden. The decision to advance the plant for the production of 300,000 annual tonnes of environmentally friendly mineral fertilizer is largely a consequence of the extensive investments that are now being made in green industrial projects in North America.

On 21 September 2023, Cinis Fertilizer signed an agreement for the supply of sodium sulphate from Ascend Elements, an independent manufacturer of advanced engi­neered battery materials. In connection with this agreement, Cinis Fertilizer decided to establish a production facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The preparatory work and contacts with partners and authorities have taken place at a high pace, which is the background to the decision to accelerate the start of planning for the facility in Kentucky.

In order to enable the acceleration of production of 300,000 tons of potassium sulphate in Kentucky, parts of the planning of the company’s Skellefteå plant, with production of 200,000 tons of potassium sulphate, are pushed forward somewhat. This means that it will be the third facility in the order of Cinis Fertilizer's six planned facilities, with a total production capacity of about 1.5 million tonnes, to be in operation in the year 2030. The expansion will be financed with internal cash flows and external loans. The company is also investigating supplementary financing solutions, which include state and federal investment grants.

″The rapid handling of important contractual issues and the great interest key players have demonstrated have made us choose to shift our schedule. Ascend Elements battery material manufacturing facility is being built quickly and we have already managed to establish a strong local network. 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 Jacob Liedberg, founder and CEO Cinis Fertilizer.

Ascend Elements is currently building its largest facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The agreement with Cinis Fertilizer means that Ascend Elements will deliver up to 240,000 tonnes of sodium sulphate annually beginning in 2024. Cinis Fertilizer has also entered into a letter of intent regarding the sale of its end product, potassium sulphate, to K+S and the purchase of potassium chloride from K+S’ production facilities in

Saskatchewan in Canada, to Cinis Fertilizer’s facility in Hopkinsville. Cinis Fertilizer’s facility is to be ready in 2025 with a production capacity of up to 300,000 tons of potassium sulphate for the North American market. Cinis Fertilizer is currently building its first production facility outside of the town of Örnsköldsvik in Sweden, with a planned start-up in early 2024.