EuroChem

Background

EuroChem is one of Europe and the world’s largest synthetic fertilizer companies.¹ ²

According to reporting by Reuters, EuroChem produces roughly 5 percent of the global fertilizer supply.³

According to EuroChem’s 2021 annual report, the company sells “nearly 20 million tonnes of fertilizers a year” and generates annual revenues of “some US$10 billion” while employing “over 27,000 people worldwide.” According to the report, EuroChem’s revenues in 2021 increased by 66 percent over 2020, and fertilizer sales volumes increased by 7 percent. The company also stated that it aims to become the third largest fertilizer corporation in the world in both production and sales by 2026.⁴

According to its 2021 annual report, EuroChem had a turnover of US$10.2 billion in 2021. The company reported sales by volume of: 34 percent nitrogen products, 14 percent complex fertilizers, 11 percent phosphates products, 9 percent potash fertilizers, 22 percent mining products, and 10 percent industrial products.⁵

According to EuroChem’s 2020 annual report, Europe accounted for 27 percent of EuroChem’s sales and Latin America for 25 percent of sales. North America and Asia-Pacific each accounted for 16 percent of sales, Russia for 14 percent, and Africa for 2 percent.⁶

EuroChem was founded in Russia, where the majority of its subsidiaries are based. It is registered in Zug, Switzerland, the capital of the Swiss canton Zug.⁷

In addition to fertilizers, EuroChem is also involved in oil and gas exploration, production, and processing, as well as mining and chemical manufacturing.⁸

Although headquartered in Switzerland, EuroChem was founded by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, and the majority of its subsidiaries are based in Russia. Its Russian operations include mining, ammonia production, and manufacturing, as well as the production and processing of natural gas.⁹

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both Melnichenko – who had been the non-executive director of the board of directors – and EuroChem’s former CEO, Vladimir Rashevskiy, were sanctioned by the EU in March 2022. Both then resigned from the company.¹⁰ ¹¹

Following Russia’s invasion, Swiss authorities initially froze the company’s bank account and paused its operations, later saying that EuroChem must “take the necessary measures within the Swiss legal system to allow the company to continue to exist.”¹² ¹³ ¹⁴

Swiss authorities freed EuroChem’s accounts in May 2022, after ownership of the company was transferred, in trust, to Melnichenko’s wife Aleksandra Melnichenko – who later also came under sanctions from the EU.¹⁵ ¹⁶

In light of the sanctions, Norwegian fertilizer producer Yara temporarily suspended purchases from EuroChem, and Austrian chemical company and fertilizer manufacturer Borealis announced that it would be refusing EuroChem’s offer to purchase its nitrogen business.¹⁷ ¹⁸

In July 2022, EuroChem called on the European Commission to “pro-actively inform EU Member States that all actors in the food and fertilizer sector, EuroChem Group AG included, are free from EU sanctions.”¹⁹

A significant proportion of global fertilizer operations are based in Russia. According to analysis by Dutch lender Rabobank, Russia accounts for over 40 percent of potash exports, over 20 percent of ammonia exports, and over 45 percent of ammonium nitrate exports – all either components of or finished fertilizer products.²⁰

Fertilizer production globally was severely disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions. The conflict contributed to already rising fertilizer prices, which have increased nearly 30 percent since the start of 2022, on top of an 80 percent increase in 2021.²¹

In July 2022, the European Commission proposed paused tariffs on goods used to produce fertilizer until 2024.²²

EuroChem has opposed the European Union’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2050, a key plank of the European Green Deal.²³

EuroChem has also argued against EU environmental farming legislation, stating: “European farmers are already struggling under excessive burdensome environmental legislations.”²⁴

EuroChem has repeatedly criticized the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), the EU’s plans for reducing agriculture’s impacts on the environment and climate. EuroChem has called Farm to Fork’s synthetic fertilizer reduction targets “pointless and counterproductive.”²⁵

Stance on Climate Change

EuroChem states in its 2021 annual report that climate change “is having a direct and destructive impact on the planet, largely due to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) which trap heat and force temperatures up,” adding that “we all have an urgent duty to reduce these damaging effects and secure our global future.”²⁶

In the report, EuroChem states that its GHG emissions have increased since 2020 by around 2.5 percent, to 37,500 tons a year. EuroChem claims that it is developing a climate-focused environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy to “implement GHG emissions reduction actions wherever possible.”

EuroChem also suggests in the report that it plans to significantly increase its fertilizer production in coming years.²⁷ EuroChem’s products include nitrogen produced from ammonia that is predominantly derived from carbon-intensive fossil fuel feedstock.²⁸

EuroChem nonetheless suggests that its products offer climate solutions, writing that its products will help farmers “under pressure to produce greater volumes of food from shrinking areas of arable land.”²⁹

EuroChem has opposed the European Union’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2050, a key plank of the European Green Deal. In 2020 comments about the carbon border adjustment mechanism, EuroChem told the European Commission that it “doubt[ed]” whether pursuing carbon neutrality was the “right path” for the EU, and stated that carbon neutral industrial production represented “an enormous or even impossible technological challenge” that would result in a “huge loss of prosperity for European citizens.”³⁰

EuroChem has also argued against EU environmental farming legislation, stating: “European farmers are already struggling under excessive burdensome environmental legislations.”³¹

Impacts of Fertilizers on Climate Change

The global food system accounts for around 30 percent of global human-driven greenhouse gas emissions. Experts consider the sector “a key driver of climate change.”³³

Synthetic fertilizers are a major contributor to the food sector’s carbon footprint, because methane (or “natural”) gas is the primary feedstock for synthetic fertilizer production.³⁴

Once in use, both organic and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers emit significant quantities of nitrous oxide (NO2), a greenhouse gas that traps 300 times more heat than CO2 and can remain in the atmosphere for decades.³⁵ ³⁶

Over the past four decades, rising use of nitrogen-based fertilizers has driven up global emissions of NO2.³⁷

Today the global climate impact of nitrogen fertilizer alone is greater than the impacts of commercial aviation, contributing roughly 2 percent of all global emissions.³⁸ ³⁹

In May 2020, the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy set a goal to reduce at least 20 percent of nutrient losses on EU farms by 2030, which could translate into a 20 percent reduction in synthetic fertilizer use.⁴⁰ ⁴¹

Stance on “Intensification” as Climate and Biodiversity Solution

EuroChem lobbies for “intensification” – producing more food on the same amount of land, with synthetic fertilizers playing a key role – as a solution to the biodiversity, soil health, and climate crises.

In 2021, in response to Brussels’ plans on land use and land change, EuroChem sent the European Commission a paper exploring possible policy approaches: intensification and “extensification,” or expanding the amount of land used for food production.⁴²

The paper, which EuroChem had published in 2019, argued that synthetic fertilizers had a role to play in “sustainable intensification,” through targeted use contributing “significantly to high yields” without increasing the amount of land devoted to food production. By contrast, according to the paper, agricultural practices that minimized or eliminated use of synthetic fertilizers, such as organic farming, would lead to conversion of more land to agricultural use to achieve the same yields, further harming biodiversity and climate:⁴³ ⁴⁴

“Only through a sustainable intensification of agricultural production climate objectives and food security can be jointly achieved whilst securing the economic survival of EU farmers…[T]he EU must urgently abandon its extensification strategy for agriculture laid out in the Farm-to-Fork strategy, e.g. 25% organic farming by 2030, as considerably less food per hectare is produced with organic farming.”

It concluded: “Reduction targets [on fertilizer use] would have even more detrimental effects.”

In 2021, EuroChem repeated this message in its public consultation response to the “New EU Soil Strategy – healthy soil for a healthy life,” proposal, stating that “the Commission’s extensification strategy of increasing organic farming by 25% is both absurd and detrimental.”⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

Academics, NGOs and policy makers have sharply challenged claims that intensification can provide a climate and biodiversity solution.

In 2015, the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security examined whether ‘sustainable intensification’ could sufficiently reduce the emissions from agriculture. It found that: “Neither business-as-usual intensification of agriculture nor moderate adoption of mitigation practices will reduce emissions enough to avoid a 2-degree C temperature increase in 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels.”⁴⁷

The argument that fertilizer use is a necessary solution to global food needs has also been widely criticized.⁴⁸

“[Attempts to] grow more by spreading more nitrogen fertiliser and destroying what is still ecologically useful will only further deteriorate the production capacity of agricultural systems,” according to agronomist Pierre-Marie Aubert, from French think tank IDDRI.⁴⁹

Yet, agribusiness interests are using these arguments to “lock-in” dependence on industrial, chemical-intensive forms of farming, which are harming both biodiversity and climate, according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).⁵⁰

Stance on Sustainable Agriculture and Pollution Reduction Plans

EuroChem has lobbied against key elements of the EU’s Green Deal related to fertilizers and farming.

In February 2021, the company submitted a response to the European Commission’s Public Consultation on the EU’s action plan towards zero pollution of air, water and soil.⁵¹ The plan aims to reduce air, water, and soil pollution to “levels no longer considered harmful to health and natural ecosystems” by 2050. It includes key targets to improve soil quality, by reducing nutrient losses (which largely come from synthetic fertilizers) and chemical pesticide use by 50 percent.

Its response stated that the consultation process was “missing considerations of the huge agronomic and economic benefits of agriculture in general and specifically of fertilization ensuring food production and providing affordable high-quality food for millions of consumers in the EU and worldwide.”⁵²

EuroChem accused the commission of being unrealistic by trying “to present the image of an ideal world, without saying that such an unrealistic scenario leads to a severe disruption of social and economic activities.” EuroChem argued that “quantitative reduction targets for fertilizers on EU level, as indicated in the F2F, is pointless and counterproductive.” EuroChem advocated for managing nutrient levels at a regional level, and suggested that additional monitoring of pollution was “certainly not necessary,” because the agricultural sector already had “well-established” systems in place.⁵³

EuroChem’s criticism of the legislation hinged on a 2020 impact assessment of Farm to Fork by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that examined the effect that the Farm to Fork Strategy could have on agricultural production and farmer revenues. The USDA’s analysis found that Farm to Fork could lead to significant reductions in EU agricultural production, and possible rises in consumer prices and imports.⁵⁴

EuroChem’s submission claimed that the USDA study “confirm[ed] our strong concerns.”⁵⁵

The USDA study is one of seven impact assessments conducted to date on the impacts of Farm to Fork. Of the seven studies, five have been financed and shaped by major industry players.⁵⁶

Multiple NGOs and academics have criticized the studies, arguing that they only give a “partial and incomplete” picture of the EU’s plans.⁵⁷ For example, they do not consider positive impacts from more sustainable production, such as the impact that a more thriving bee population could have on crop pollination.⁵⁸ They also fail to consider what will happen if no action is taken, and climate breakdown and biodiversity loss lead to a global crisis in food production.⁵⁹

Lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory accused industry members of using the studies “to scaremonger about economic losses while painting an unfair picture” about the impact of F2F’s fertilizer reduction targets.⁶⁰

Agrochemical interests including EuroChem have widely called for the European Commission to conduct its own impact assessment.⁶¹

In July 2021, EuroChem Head of Public Affairs Igor Shmidt wrote in Fertilizer International Magazine:⁶²

“Regrettably, the European Commission has shied away from presenting its own comprehensive impact assessment of the Farm to Fork Strategy, while being critical of other institutions, such as the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), that have willingly undertaken such studies.

Corporate Europe Observatory stated that “such assessments tend to favour economic factors over social and environmental ones, only delaying progress towards tackling the climate emergency.”⁶³

Stance on EU Soil Strategy

In EuroChem’s response to the EU Soil Strategy, a policy plan for improving soil health to help foster biodiversity and capture atmospheric carbon, the company stated that “European farmers are already struggling under excessive burdensome environmental legislations.”⁶⁴

EuroChem has argued that issues such as pollution and soil health should be managed by Member States, rather than by EU-wide legislation.⁶⁵ ⁶⁶

In April 2021, EuroChem stated that “soil has no cross-border effect and, consequently, no EU legal framework for soil should be introduced in the future.”⁶⁷

Stance on Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

In 2020, EuroChem responded to the European Commission’s plans for a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). The plans aimed to level the costs of higher-emission imports with products produced under stricter carbon-neutral targets in the EU.⁶⁸

EuroChem suggested that climate policies were being “misused as modified trade defense instruments to protect EU companies from better performing competitors outside Europe.”

EuroChem continued:

“The European Commission is also spreading false rhetoric by claiming that the EU’s trading partners will hesitate to impose counter-measures once a CBAM is introduced. Being international and working with many international governments, we can affirmatively state that they will not hesitate a minute to take counter-measures.”

EuroChem suggested that the EU was imposing CBAM “without proper consultation at international level with other key global trading partners.”

EuroChem suggested that because of this, the measures would “undercut and undermine the global dialogue on climate, discouraging and potentially leading to countries’ withdrawals altogether.”

EuroChem also suggested that CBAM would be “counterproductive for the EU fertilizer industry to innovate and to decarbonize.” According to the company, the EU should focus instead on designing a “business-friendly” framework to support decarbonization technologies, particularly carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).⁶⁹

Funding

According to its 2021 annual report, EuroChem had a turnover of US$10.2 billion in 2021. The company reported the following sales by volume to be: 34% nitrogen, 14% complex, 11% phosphates, 9% potash, 22% mining products, 10% industrial products.⁷⁰

According to its 2020 annual report, Europe accounted for 27% of EuroChem’s sales and Latin America for 25 percent of sales. North America and Asia-Pacific each accounted for 16 percent of sales, , Russia for 14 percent, and Africa for 2 percent.⁷¹

Lobbying

EuroChem spent 100,000 – 199,999 euros on lobbying in 2020, according to the EU transparency register.⁷²

Between 2018 and 2020, EuroChem spent 550,000 – 750,000 euros in total, and in 2020 employed two lobbyists registered in the EU Transparency Register.⁷³

EuroChem states that its primary policy targets are legislation and plans involving:⁷⁴

Fertilizer regulation
Industry and trade
Energy
Agriculture policy, such as the Common Agricultural Policy
Environmental regulations, including soil, water, and air
Chemical regulations or REACH
Climate change and energy policies such as the EU Emission Trading Scheme or CBAM

EuroChem did not disclose any meetings held with senior members of the European Commission in 2021.⁷⁵

Affiliations

EuroChem is a member of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC).⁷⁶

EuroChem was previously a member of Fertilizers Europe. In March 2022, Fertilizers Europe announced that in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and EU sanctions of Melnichenko, it had “decided to suspend the membership of EuroChem Group as of 23 March 2022. An Extraordinary General Assembly will be called towards end of April to take a formal decision on EuroChem’s membership.”⁷⁷

As of November 2022, EuroChem was no longer listed as a member of the industry group.⁷⁸

EuroChem’s 2022 submission to the EU Transparency Register stated that it was a member of the International Fertilizer Association (IFA).⁷⁹

However, the company was no longer listed on the IFA’s membership list.⁸⁰

EuroChem’s Transparency Register entry also stated that “EuroChem Group is through its production and sales, R&D locations also a member of the national fertilizer associations throughout the EU and abroad (e.g. Industrieverband Agrar).”⁸¹

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Dana Drugmand, Steven Feit, Lili Fuhr, and Carroll Muffett, “Fossils, Fertilizers, and False Solutions: How Laundering Fossil Fuels in Agrochemicals Puts the Climate and the Planet at Risk,” Centre for International Environmental Law, October 2022. Archived November 1, 2022. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
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Kerstine Appunn. “EU’s Farm to Fork strategy impacts climate, productivity and trade,” Clean Energy Wire, March 5, 2021. Archived November 26, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.fo/iwt40
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Thomas Mannheim, Catarina Henka, EuroChem. “Intensive Landwirtschaft und Schutz der Biodiversität – Ein Widerspruch? Intensive Landwirtschaft ist Teil des Biodiversitätsschutzes,” European Commission, November 2019. Archived August 1, 2022. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
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44
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45
EuroChem. “Additional comments on the consultation ‘Healthy soils – new EU soil strategy’,” European Commission, April 27, 2021. Archived August 1, 2022. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
46
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EuroChem. “Our additional comments on the consultation ‘Towards zero pollution in air, water and soil – EU action plan’,” European Commission, February 10, 2021. Archived August 1, 2022. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
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Jayson Beckman, Maros Ivanic, Jeremy L. Jelliffe, Felix G. Baquedano, and Sara G. Scott. “Economic and Food Security Impacts of Agricultural Input Reduction Under the European Union Green Deal’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies,” United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, November 2020. Archived December 15, 2022. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
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DeSmog

DeSmog

EuroChem

Background

Stance on Climate Change

Impacts of Fertilizers on Climate Change

Stance on “Intensification” as Climate and Biodiversity Solution

Stance on Sustainable Agriculture and Pollution Reduction Plans

Stance on EU Soil Strategy

Stance on Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

Funding

Lobbying

Affiliations

Resources

Related Profiles

APCO Worldwide

Hugh W. Ellsaesser

Al Pekarek

Benny Peiser

DeSmog

DeSmog

EuroChem

Background

Stance on Climate Change

Impacts of Fertilizers on Climate Change

Stance on “Intensification” as Climate and Biodiversity Solution

Stance on Sustainable Agriculture and Pollution Reduction Plans

Stance on EU Soil Strategy

Stance on Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

Funding

Lobbying

Affiliations

Resources

Related Profiles

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