Deep below one of the UK’s oldest national parks, a 350 ton boring machine chews into mudstone rock. Traveling about 2 meters a day, the giant mechanical mole is digging Europe’s deepest mine shaft. But its final target is still about one kilometer and three years away: a thick seam of polyhalite, a rare type of fertiliser, stretching out for miles under the North Sea.
Today, polyhalite remains a very niche product in the fertiliser world, with production of just 1 million tons a year from an aging mine nearby. Anglo plans to increase that 14 fold. To do that, the company will have to convince farmers across the globe that what it’s digging up is better for their crops than existing fertilisers.
However, rival producers and some of Anglo’s investors are skeptical about whether the company can build a big enough market for the fertiliser, in an industry that isn’t used to change. The stakes are high. The UK project will be Anglo’s single biggest investment since building a giant iron ore mine that almost bankrupted it. If successful, the mine will represent a new bulk-commodities business that could last for generations and comes without the environmental baggage of its current coal and iron ore operations.
Anglo will also be selling into a global fertiliser market that has become increasingly volatile. Last year, trade constraints along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked a huge price rally that eventually prompted farmers around the world to slash fertiliser use, forcing a major correction.