For Morocco’s OCP group, the world’s largest phosphate fertilizer company, 2022 brought record earnings thanks to higher prices and profit margins due to the Ukraine crisis, wrote the Financial Times (FT).
The British daily noted that operating profits reached $3.65bn, up from $1.99bn for the same period in 2021.
It recalled that OCP is one of the five top exporters of fertilizer, as it has exclusive access to the 70% of global phosphate reserves that are located in Morocco.
The Financial Times quoted CEO of OCP Mostafa Terrab as saying that the world needed more investment in the industry and that prices had been rising even before the war.
Terrab is credited with changing OCP into a joint-stock company to access international debt markets. He built, in 2012, an integrated industrial business with major investments in mining and fertilizer production and even a university for R&D.
According to Terrab, Africa holds the key to global food security because it has 60% of the world’s unused arable land.
The paper recalled that OCP has recently announced plans to invest $13bn in renewable energy and green hydrogen to be carbon neutral by 2040.
It also said that, in the wake of the Ukraine war, OCP, which supplies 70% of fertilizer in Africa, gave more than 500,000 tons to small holders in sub-Saharan countries, some of it free, the rest at a discount.
OCP started looking South in 2012, at a time when Moroccan businesses sought growth in sub-Saharan states to expand beyond their limited domestic market. The strategy, encouraged by King Mohammed VI, helped build the country’s soft power and influence, the daily said.