Koch Fertilizer / Koch Ag & Energy Solutions

What they make

4 inputs Koch Fertilizer / Koch Ag & Energy Solutions supplies

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Where they make it

1 facility

Intelligence

What's known

Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains, chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.

• Did you know2024

  Koch Fertilizer's anhydrous ammonia is simultaneously the world's most widely used nitrogen fertilizer (applied directly to farm fields before planting corn, wheat, and cotton) and the primary industrial refrigerant in large-scale cold storage systems (R-717). Every major pork, beef, and poultry processing facility, every large cold storage warehouse, and most commercial ice rinks use anhydrous ammonia as their refrigerant — the same molecule Koch sells to corn farmers in Iowa and to refrigeration contractors in Chicago. Urea, Koch's other major nitrogen product, is the nitrogen compound in diesel exhaust fluid (DEF/AdBlue) added to SCR systems in all modern diesel trucks to reduce NOx emissions. Koch's fertilizer plants simultaneously produce the molecule that grows America's food (anhydrous ammonia as fertilizer), keeps America's food cold (anhydrous ammonia as refrigerant), and allows America's food to be delivered (urea as DEF in diesel trucks).

  Koch Ag & Energy Solutions ↗

• Concentration2023

  The US nitrogen fertilizer market is dominated by four producers: CF Industries, Nutrien (Canadian), Mosaic, and Koch Ag — who together control approximately 70%+ of US ammonia and urea production capacity. Natural gas costs (the primary feedstock for Haber-Bosch ammonia synthesis, at ~70-80% of ammonia production cost) make US nitrogen producers competitive when US Henry Hub gas is cheap relative to European Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas. In 2021-2022, when European natural gas prices spiked after Russia's supply restriction, European ammonia production became uneconomical and European farmers faced fertilizer shortages — while US Koch and CF Industries plants operating on cheap Marcellus/Permian gas ran profitably. The US nitrogen fertilizer industry's competitive advantage is entirely a function of the shale gas revolution and maintained by the US natural gas price differential from the rest of the world.

  USDA Agricultural Marketing Service ↗

• Origin2024

  Koch Fertilizer is part of Koch Industries, founded by Fred Koch (father of Charles and David Koch) who built his fortune on petroleum refining technology in the 1930s. Fred Koch helped build an oil refinery in the Soviet Union in 1929-1931 (for the early Soviet industrial program) and another for Germany's Third Reich in the mid-1930s — then became an ardent anti-communist and helped found the John Birch Society. Koch Industries today is one of the largest private companies in the world (~$115B revenue), operating in petroleum refining (Flint Hills), building materials and paper (Georgia-Pacific — Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups), electronic connectors (Molex), glass (Guardian Industries), and nitrogen fertilizer (Koch Fertilizer). The same private Wichita, Kansas company that funds libertarian and conservative political organizations through the Koch Network also produces the nitrogen fertilizer that grows a significant fraction of US corn, the connectors in smartphones, and the glass in commercial buildings.

  Koch Ag & Energy Solutions ↗