Nutrien celebrates 65 years of potash mining in Saskatchewan

Potash is simply a important assets for cultivation occurrence astir the world, and Saskatchewan is 1 of North America’s large producers.

Les Frehlich, wide manager of Nutrien’s Allan mine, says Saskatchewan potash is the crushed astir nations person nutrient to enactment connected the table.

“Potash is utilized to forestall illness successful crops. And, you know, potash depletion passim the satellite is astir 70 cardinal tons. And that’s however we tin feed  8 cardinal radical worldwide. (It) is owed to the potash that’s utilized successful fertilizer,”

Nutrien’s Allan excavation has been astir since 1964 and determination person been plentifulness of changes to the manufacture since then.

“Officially erstwhile it started in, you cognize the ’60s, everything was manual, ” says Kasia McChesney, a process engineer-in-training astatine the Allan mine.

“Now we’ve seen truthful overmuch alteration to automate each of our procedures and the mode that we enactment successful the mill. And truthful for me, conscionable seeing however the instrumentality is present each automatically changing with the antithetic conditions is rather interesting.”

Frehlich says too the technological advancements, information has besides improved successful bid to conscionable demand.

“We’ve expanded from producing a cardinal tons per twelvemonth to 3 cardinal tons per twelvemonth capableness present conscionable successful Allan, and past besides the information civilization is vastly improved.”

McChesney says 65 years of the mine’s cognition means Nutrien has plentifulness of ties to the state and its people.

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“I conjecture Nutrien and the mines successful wide successful Saskatchewan are specified a immense leader of our people. I mean, everyplace astir agrarian Saskatchewan you spot a nutrition retailer. And so, of course, those are my radical moving there, right? So to me, it hits location and employs each the radical astir us,”

Frehlich says the economical benefits of the excavation are besides thing for the state to beryllium arrogant of.

“We person astir 680 employees, so, you know, our payroll present is adjacent to $40 million. And that’s each present successful Saskatchewan. All those radical are paying taxes successful Saskatchewan. And that’s conscionable 1 excavation site,”

Roughly 95 per cent of potash successful Canada is utilized arsenic fertilizer; much than fractional of that is sent worldwide for usage successful different markets.