The Managing Director, Rahamaniyya Fertiliser Plant, Satish Singh Rathore, in this interview with Adedayo Akinwale, says Nigeria has no reason importing fertilizer. Excerpts:
What kind of fertiliser are you producing in your company?
At Rahamaniyya Fertilizer, we prepare NPK 20:10:10 fertilizer and NPK 15:15:15. These two varieties are very familiar and very famous with the farmers and we produce all kinds of NPK fertilizers: They use NPK 20:10:10 and NPK 15:15:15 for various crops. The aim of Rahamaniyya fertilizer is to produce very good fertilizers for farmers. That is our target. In preparation of NPK, we use urea, we use DAP, MOP and limestone. Limestone is a raw material, but in preparation of the limestone, we have our own products, we don’t buy from anybody. That means our limestone granules are very good product because it’s 100 per cent limestone. We give 100 per cent to farmers. The Rahamanniyya Fertilizers — NPK 20:10:10 and NPK 15:15:15 are some of the best fertilizers in Nigeria. We have already given the sample to the Nigerian government, they have already approved the two as the best in Nigeria. We are giving the farmers good products, that is the target of Rahamanniyya Fertilizer. What we give farmers pure fertilizer. Purity means what are the elements in the fertilizer, just like Urea. Urea must be pure, DAP must be pure, MOP must be pure and limestone should be pure. Nowadays in the market, we have seen so many varieties of limestones, but our limestone is the number one in the market. I challenged others to check the quality of the limestone we are using. They can come to our plant and see our limestone granules name and they can check the property and the quality we are using. We are using pure ground limestone, which does not have dust and mud.
It means it will yield more profit to farmers automatically. And my whole team is working according to that.
What is the cost of the project?
We have two lines of NPK. Two lines mean line one and line two. All the lines are designed for 60MT per hour. That means we can say one line has the capacity of 1,414. The two lines have the capacity of 2,818 MT per day. That means we are capable of producing 2,818 MT per day of NPK. After two lines of blending plants, we also have a limestone plant. The problem of limestone is dust. Our limestone plant has zero dust. That is why our fertilizer is very pure. We have two limestone plants. One plant is already commissioned and the second is almost at completion. Within two months, the project would be completed. After the competition, we can run four plants at a time.
How many metric tonnes can it produce per annum?
We are producing 2,818 MT per day. So you can say 1,028,570MT per annum is our blending capacity and limestone capacity is 40MT per hour and if you calculate in 30 hours or 24 hours, we can say 800MT per day production for the limestone granules. This is the first plant in Nigeria with this capacity. Rahamanniyya Fertilizer is one of the biggest and highest capacity plants in Nigeria. It’s a huge production.
There are similar fertilizer plants across Nigeria, what would you say is the strength Rahamanniyya Fertilizer has over others?
Actually in Nigeria, a lot of fertilizer plants are available. And for the urea, the Dangote fertilizer plant is also there in Lagos. Indorama fertilizer is in Port Harcourt, Rivers State and so many other NPK plants. The Dangote fertilizer is producing only urea and the Indorama fertilizer produces only urea. But we are mixing the fertilizer. What is the purpose of urea? Urea is giving nitrogen to the crops. But, we are mixing the fertilizer. That means we are giving nitrogen, phosphorus, potash and limestone. That is why I’m saying our fertilizer is unique.
With the Rahamanniyah fertilizer coming on board, do you think it is enough to stop Nigeria from importing fertilizer from other parts of the world?
Yes, that is a big problem we are facing in Nigeria. That we are importing fertilizer from abroad is not good because everything is available in Nigeria. Phosphate is available. Sokoto is rich in limestone — very huge quantity of limestone is available in the State. Dangote and Indorama are producing urea, so we are not depending on other countries for the urea, we are depending on our own.
As a Nigerian team, I’m saying we are producing our own urea and after some time we are going to produce our phosphate as well. Phosphate is also available in Nigeria. The phosphate we are using as DAP. MOP, we can import from other countries, it’s okay. But other three products are also available in Nigeria. With Rahamanniyya Fertilizer, Nigeria will not be dependent on other countries because our product quality and capacity is already very high. It is sufficient for the Nigerian market.
How does Rahamanniyya fertilizer benefit the farmers?
Initially, I told you that so many fertilizers are available in the market. And I have checked because we are in the market, we are competing in the market, some old fertilizer producers are also there.
That is why we want to compete in the market. So, what we are doing, we are taking samples from other fertilizers companies and we are doing sampling in our own laboratory and we are comparing our products. We are comparing the standard of our product with others. And we found that our product quality is very high. If farmers purchase Rahamaniyya Fertilizer, it will give them automatic benefits because other products in the market have a lot of dust and mud. There is too much dust in the fertilizer they are purchasing. If farmers are using the Rahamaniyya fertilizer, one bag of our product is equal to four bags of other fertilizers.
