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Acron Urea Operations to Celebrate 50th Anniversary

Over half of a century, Acron’s facility in Veliky Novgorod produced 21 million tonnes of urea

Today, the Acron facility in Veliky Novgorod has six urea units in operation. The first two units, with a total capacity of 180,000 tonnes per annum, were put on stream in 1969. In 1972, two more units with similar capacity were launched. In 2010, the Group commenced a large-scale technical upgrade to the urea shop with construction of the fifth 335,000-tpa urea unit.

The Urea-6 unit with a daily capacity of 600 tonnes was put into operation at the end of 2018. In 2019, after assessing its sustainable performance, the Group resolved to transform Urea-6 into a large-capacity unit with an annual output of up to 735,000 tonnes, increasing the unit’s capacity by over 500,000 tonnes.

Simultaneously, Acron is constructing a granulated urea unit with annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes. Granulated urea has better consumer properties: it is stronger, with lower alkalinity and more uniform granule size. It is also less prone to friability loss. The investments in this project will total approximately USD 35 million.

Once the upgrades to the urea shop are completed, urea output at the Veliky Novgorod production site will increase to over 1.9 million tonnes per annum, making Acron the largest urea producer in both Russia and Europe.

“At our urea operations, we put together an excellent team capable of constructing and launching a new unit in a record time without third-party support. The design, procurement of equipment, construction and assembly are being conducted in parallel, allowing us to drastically cut implementation time. I would like to emphasize that Acron is committed to working with local construction and assembly organisations, as we have benefitted from longstanding cooperation with the Novgorod region”, says the Head of the Urea Shop Sergey Berezin.

Urea is a high-analysis nitrogen fertiliser and a feedstock for urea-ammonium fertiliser and urea-formaldehyde resins. Urea has the highest nitrogen content of all the granulated nitrogen fertilisers, which makes it the most popular fertiliser in the world. Urea is widely applied to a range of crops and all soil types. In 2018, Acron (Veliky Novgorod) produced 1,553,000 tonnes of urea.