경영진 답변Burt FrostExecutive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer
Yeah, Brazil has been an amazing story over the last 25 years with their consumption of urea and especially on imports because they've become one of the drivers of a glow of demand. But if you go back to those earlier years, it was about two, two and a half million tons of imports to today, almost eight million tons of imports But parallel to that, ammonium sulfate, coming in at also around 8 million tons. So on the end molecule or the end product, the nitrogen product coming into Brazil has grown substantially, ammonium nitrate being fairly consistent. And so what has happened, though, during that time period, these plants are old. You have the plant in Paraná, close to Paranaguá, and then Camasari and some of the plants in Sergipe that are up north. Those plants are not well-placed, at least the northern plants, to where demand is, and they've struggled to operate over the years. One, that they're inefficient. Two, that they're high logistics costs to move the product to the high-demand areas. Brazil continues to grow in acres and acres planted, and especially with the double cropping being economically viable. And so we do see these plants coming on, and they've also talked about re-initiating construction, the Plan de Mato Grosso do Sul project, that was stopped about 10 or 15 years ago. And so Brazil has the capability. What they don't have is the gas where these plants are producing or enough gas. That's been an issue as well. So I think that's an initiative of the Lula government and Petrobras to continue to invest and serve their domestic farmers as they can. But Brazil will still be a major importer and a major driver of urea demand or nitrogen demand worldwide.