New facility to create safer fertilizer

Honeywell signed an agreement with the J.R. Simplot Company, one of the world’s largest privately held food and agribusiness companies, to build a facility that will produce Honeywell’s Sulf-N 26, a highly-effective fertilizer with all the agronomic benefits of traditional nitrate-based fertilizers, but with significantly lower explosive potential.

Sulf-N 26 is a new, dry granular ammonium sulfate nitrate (ASN) fertilizer made from a patented Honeywell process that chemically fuses ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate to produce an entirely new and highly stable molecule, a 26-0-0 14S fertilizer.

Independent agronomic tests on crops and plants -- ranging from grass to cabbage and tomatoes to strawberry and oranges -- found the new fertilizer to be safe and effective for agricultural use compared with traditional nitrate-based fertilizers. Sulf-N 26 is compatible with other fertilizers in prescription blends and safe to transport, handle and store.

Sulf-N 26 was independently tested, with guidance from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and demonstrated significantly less or, in some cases, no explosive power, when compared to traditional nitrate-based fertilizers. It has been granted SAFETY Act (Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies) Designation from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The SAFETY Act was created to provide incentives, including liability protections, for the development and deployment of anti-terrorism technologies that can help mitigate security threats.

Under the terms of the agreement, Honeywell will engineer, construct and own a modular manufacturing facility at Simplot’s Lathrop, Calif. production plant. Simplot will operate the facility and have exclusive rights to market and sell the fertilizer in the Western U.S., Western Canada and Northern Mexico.

"This agreement is an important milestone, allowing us to produce Sulf-N 26 on a large scale and begin to bring this safe and effective fertilizer to the marketplace,” said Qamar Bhatia, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Resins and Chemicals, which is one of the world’s largest producers of ammonium sulfate fertilizer. “Our goal is to have the plant built and producing product by early 2013.”

"This agreement will provide our agricultural and professional products customers with a safe, efficient and agronomically viable alternative to traditional ammonium nitrate fertilizers,” said Garrett Lofto, president of Simplot’s AgriBusiness Group. “The new fertilizer fuses ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate into a dry, granular product that is easy to handle, safe to ship and store, and is compatible with other Nitrogen, Phosphorus or Potassium ingredients. It is a unique product that is very well-suited to Western soils, crops and turf grass.”