Business & Money | Thursday 1 August, 2019 7:28 am |

The Arab Potash Company (APC) has announced that its net profit after taxes, provisions and royalties amounted to JD78.2 million during the first six months of 2019, recording an increase of 48 per cent from the JD52.7 million generated during the same period last year.

In a statement on Wednesday, APC’s Chairman of the Board of Directors Jamal Al Sarayrah attributed the increase in profits primarily to a 113-per cent growth in potash sales.

The chairman also said that the reduction in production costs, the rise in international potash prices and the record production volumes all played a significant role in increasing profit margins.

Sarayrah explained that the leading mining company has achieved a record production of potash during the first half of 2019 that amounted to 1.28 million metric tonnes, compared with 1.21 million tonnes during the same period last year, the statement said.

APC has also achieved “record” sales volume of potash during the first six months of this year that amounted of 1.24 million tonnes, signalling an increase of 3.6 per cent from the same period in 2018, the chairman said.

Sarayrah added that the APC’s share in the profits of its affiliated companies, mainly the Jordan-Bromine Company, has reached JD30 million in the first half of this year, recording an increase of 135 per cent for the same period in 2018, according to the statement.

He stressed that work is under way to construct a new dam in the northern part of the APC’s concession land as per efforts to boost the production capacity of the company’s plants by 140,000 tonnes annually.

He also noted that the APC-owned Arab Fertilisers and Chemicals Industries (KEMAPCO) has achieved “great successes” over the past years, pushing the company to study the expansion in KEMAPCO’s production of potassium nitrate.

For his part, APC President and CEO Maen Nsour said that the company has started producing potash types to access new markets in Latin America, Thailand and Vietnam, where there is an expected growth in demand for the commodity. 

Nsour added that the company is in the process of updating its strategic plan for the coming ten years, with the aim of enhancing the country’s potash industry, taking into consideration the “dynamic changes in the production of fertilisers”.