CF Industries announced the company will make a $41.4 million capital investment to enhance nitric acid production at the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer complex in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.
>
CF Industries will retain 487 jobs, with the project resulting in more than 30 new jobs in the Capital Region, including seven new direct jobs that will have an average annual salary of $100,000, plus benefits, and 24 new indirect jobs.
The new project follows a $2.1 billion expansion completed by CF Industries in 2016 that parish officials described as the largest single capital investment project in Ascension Parish history. In that project, CF Industries exceeded its obligations to the State of Louisiana and has created nearly 50 percent more new jobs than projected.
CF Industries is a global leader in the manufacture and distribution of nitrogen products for fertilizer, emissions abatement and other industrial applications.
Based in Deerfield, Illinois, the company operates nine nitrogen facilities in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. The Donaldsonville complex is the largest production complex in the world producing anhydrous ammonia, urea, and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), nitric acid and diesel exhaust fluid, which represent the nitrogen-based products most heavily used by agricultural, industrial and other markets.
The company’s Donaldsonville site is located on 1,400 acres along the west bank of the Mississippi River in Ascension Parish. The CF Industries facility makes use of five major natural gas pipelines and multiple modes of transportation in Ascension Parish, which allows the facility to serve customers on every continent.
The Donaldsonville facility is the world's largest and most flexible nitrogen facility, with six world-scale ammonia plants, five urea plants, four nitric acid plants, three urea ammonium nitrate plants and a diesel exhaust fluid plant. The site ships product to customers via the NuStar ammonia pipeline, rail, truck barge (river and ocean), and deep-water vessel.
In the latest project, CF Industries will increase the concentration of its industrial-grade nitric acid from 60 percent to 65 percent in the Nitric Acid No. 4 plant, which carries an annual production capacity of 600,000 tons.
The investment also will include the addition of an air chiller and the installation of product storage. Additionally, new rail car and truck loading will be included as part of the reinvestment.
The company is expected to utilize the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program for the expansion. ■