Yara CEO:Co To Raise Global Market Share, Make Big Acquisitions

The chief executive of Yara ASA (YAR.OS), the world's biggest fertilizer company by sales volume, said the company plans to increase its global market share further, and will make large acquisitions to do that.

"We've signaled profitable growth, and plan to increase our market share on a worldwide basis," CEO Joergen Haslestad told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview Thursday.

"That will come through normal organic growth, through bolt-on acquisitions and larger acquisitions also need to be done," he added.

The company was hit harder than it expected by the global economic downturn, which eroded demand for fertilizer, leading to capacity curtailments in a bid to cut supply and support prices. But Yara has started to increase output again, and will produce nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, or NPK fertilizers, at 70% of its capacity in the third quarter, up from 50% in the second quarter.

Haslestad said it's uncertain whether capacity cutbacks will continue into the fourth quarter because it depends on whether still sluggish NPK markets pick up. "We're working on this daily," he said. In contrast, nitrate demand has returned, and Yara has sold all of its capacity in the third quarter.

Haslestad said he's comfortable Yara hasn't lost any of its fertilizer market share during the current period of volume reductions. "We've still got 7% to 8% globally and around 30% of the European market share," he said.

Yara plans to increase its global market share and is looking to areas with cheap gas supplies - a key feedstock in the production of fertilizer - such as the Middle East and North Africa. "Iraq and Iran would be interesting countries to go into," Haslestad said, adding: "Something will [also] come up in the former Soviet Union, but there are challenges in those countries around political stability. We're reluctant to invest a lot of money there."

Although Yara isn't active in an ongoing three-way bidding war in the U.S., where CF Industries Holdings Inc. (CF) is bidding for Terra Industries Inc. (TRA) and Agrium Inc. (AGU) for CF, Haslestad suggested some assets may crop up there when the merger-and-acquisition activity settles down.

"Fertilizer is an industry that needs to be consolidated to get more stability. As the biggest company in terms of sold volumes, we will participate in that process," he said.

Company Web site: www.yara.com

-By Elizabeth Adams, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]