“Grupa Azoty gives jobs to more than three thousand people in its own industrial plants and to about nine thousand people at cooperating companies. Additionally, about a thousand people will work on the construction of the Puławy Power Plant for three years. Having completed 150 projects over four years, at a cost of PLN 1.1bn, Grupa Azoty PUŁAWY surely deserves to be called the investment champion in its region. Now, the Company is facing another five years of intense investment activity, worth in total PLN 2.2bn, which well illustrates the scale of operation of the flagship of Puławy’s business. To me this means just one thing – vast opportunities for the region and for the Polish chemical sector,” Włodzimierz Karpiński, Minister of the State Treasury, said at a press conference.
“These investment projects will open up new space for production, operations and logistics opportunities. We will become self-sufficient for electricity and heat supplies and will be able to offer modern fertilizer formulae to our customers and new jobs to the region’s community,” said Marian Rybak, President of the Management Board of Grupa Azoty PUŁAWY.
The new 400 MWe Puławy Power Plant (generating low emissions and no waste as it will be fired with natural gas), combined with the currently used coal-fired unit, will make the Company fully independent of external supplies of electricity and steam needed in its day-to-day production. Any electricity output in excess of the Company’s requirement will be sold on the market. Gas-fired energy generation is fully compatible with the EU climate policy, and the choice of this solution will allow the Company to dramatically cut the costs of carbon dioxide emissions. In the wake of advancing liberalisation of the natural gas market, power generation based on natural gas has been increasingly more popular in Europe. With a budget in excess of PLN 1.1bn, the Puławy Power Plant is the largest project being recently implemented in the Lublin Province.
The nitric acid project envisages the construction of a new nitric acid line and modernisation of the existing lines. The production capacity of the nitric acid lines intended for modernisation will be increased by at least 5%, and the consumption rates for the main production feedstocks and energy carriers are also to be improved: in the case of ammonia by about 5%, in the case of high-pressure steam yield − 15%, and in the case of electricity − also 15%. The project will not only raise the efficiency of production of nitric acid, but also will considerably improve the economics of production of fertilizers manufactured based on nitric acid. Any excess of nitric acid will be processed on the new line for the production of speciality fertilizers (magnesium nitrate, calcium nitrate and potassium nitrate), with a capacity of 600 tonnes per day. The work on the new speciality fertilizer line will commence next year and will continue until 2021. Expenditure on this investment is estimated at PLN 695m.
The construction of a new mechanical granulation unit will improve the flexibility of production of ammonium nitrate and enable the Company to manufacture other fertilizers, such as calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) and granulated ammonium nitrate. The Company’s decision to embark on this project was made in response to the changing market conditions. The project, scheduled for completion in 2019, will cost approximately PLN 385m.