Iowa Will Get Fertilizer Complex

Egypt’s Orascom Construction Industries plans to build a $1.4 billion nitrogen fertilizer plant near Wever, Iowa, by mid-2015. Set to produce up to 2 million metric tons per year of ammonia, urea, and ammonium nitrate, the plant will be the first world-scale natural-gas-based nitrogen fertilizer facility in the U.S. in 25 years, Orascom says. Last year Orascom bought and restarted an idle plant in Beaumont, Texas, with 250,000 metric tons of annual ammonia capacity. In 2010 it bought DSM’s fertilizer and melamine business in the Netherlands. Including operations in Egypt and Algeria, Orascom says its nitrogen fertilizer capacity exceeds 7 million metric tons.