You may have been one of those people that believed that Zambia is capable of manufacturing fertilizer locally, especially with the nostalgic stories attached to Kafue’s Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia – NCZ, that the company in not so distant past, used to locally manufacture and meet all fertilizer needs of Zambia.
Well, think again. Information has now emerged that Zambia has no requisite raw materials needed to locally manufacture the high usage basal and top dressing fertilizers needed to meet the growing demand of the Agro sector.
One of Zambia’s organic fertilizer companies who asked that their name be withheld has exclusively revealed to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT that Zambia is unable to locally manufacture fertilizer, as it does not have the key minerals required to do so.
The source revealed that the only thing that can be done in the country is a process called blending in order to produce Urea (for top dressing), D Compound (for basal dressing p) and all the common types of fertilizers used in the country.
The organic fertilizer source told ZBT that some of the ingredients used to blend which are gotten [or imported] from outside the country include potassium sulphate, potassium nitrate, magnesium sulphate, potassium hydroxide, potassium carbonate, magnesium nitrate, iron sulphate, phosphoric acid and citric acid among other things.
The Source said phosphorous potassium Sulphur and iron are some of the elements, which build up Nitrogen Phosphorous and Potassium (NPK) and are used to make fertilizer. He said some of the minerals which are used to manufacture fertilizer, are not mined in Zambia and only specific countries have these minerals.
“For example urea being a very common and high usage fertilizer in Zambia, is not readily available in the country. Urea a byproduct of gas production process, we don’t have any local gas production, most of the gas companies are Arab companies, so they are able to produce urea. If we had these key required minerals, we would be able to manufacture fertilizer locally”, he said.
He added that some companies import some of these key fertilizer manufacturing materials and engage companies like Export Trading Group (ETG) or Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) to blend for them.
