Dangote activates $2.5bn Urea Fertilizer plant, plans to train farmers, establish labs

*Dangote Industries Limited has said its new Urea fertilizer plant has the capacity to produce over 4,500 tonnes of Urea daily to meet consumer demand in Nigeria, and produce to generate $400m foreign exchange earnings from exports

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

With a plan to support the farmers with training on application of the product and establish laboratories, Dangote Urea Fertilizer is now on sales in Nigeria as the company currently pushes out a minimum of 120 trucks per day across the country.

ConsumerConnect reports Urea Fertilizers provide three primary nutrients, including Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K). While Nitrogen supports vegetative growth, Phosphorus improves roots and flowering, and Potassium strengthens resistance to environmental assaults, from extreme temperatures to pest attacks.

Trucks convey bags of fertilizer from the plants to markets daily

Devakumar  Edwin, Group Executive Director (Strategy, Capital Projects & Portfolio Development), Dangote Industries Limited, who disclosed this development to journalists at the weekend, said the that plant which has the capacity to push out over 4,500 tonnes of Urea per day will conveniently meet the local demand and even produce for exports.

Dangote’s Group Executive Director noted that aside from fertilizer production, the company is already working to support the farmers with training on application of the product, and even establish laboratories across the country for proper soil examination.

Edwin stated: “The uniqueness of this plant, apart from the fact that we are producing is the focus on farmers’ support, on training, education, development as we are now establishing laboratories across the country and even mobile laboratories where we can go drive around and take soil samples for proper examination to effectively grow the agricultural outputs across the country.”

The Urea Fertilizer plant was built to tap into Nigeria’s demand for fertilizer, a critical component of achieving food sufficiency for Africa’s most populous country, said the company.

The plant is expected to manufacture three million metric tonnes of Urea per annum, with a view to reducing the nation’s fertilizer imports, and generating $400m annual foreign exchange from export to Africa countries.

Sequel to actualisation of the Urea Fertilizer production project in in Nigeria, marketers and farmers in Kano, Northern Nigeria, apparently described the newly introduced Dangote Fertilizer as a game changer, and foretaste to the expected agricultural revolution in the country.

Similarly, marketers and farmers said to be excited about the new fertilizer product have welcomed the over 10 trucks of the product that streamed into the Kano markets at the weekend.

Alhaji Shuaibu Akarami, Chairman of Kano State Agro Dealers Association, speaking at the event organised by Dan Hydro Company, in Kano, to mark the introduction of the fertilizer into the Northern market at the weekend said agro dealers have confidence in Dangote Fertilizer as they have in all his products.

As a dealer who has spent decades in the business, Alhaji Akarami was quoted to have stated that he discovered that Dangote Fertilizer would have no problem penetrating the market in the Northern part of the country.

ConsumerConnect also reports that Urea is the most important nitrogenous fertilizer in the market, with the highest Nitrogen content (about 46 percent).

It is a white crystalline organic chemical compound. Urea is neutral in pH and can adapt to almost all kinds of soils.

It described as a waste product formed naturally by metabolising protein in humans as well as other mammals, amphibians and some fish.

Urea is widely used in the agricultural sector both as a fertilizer and animal feed additive.