Satish Rathore is the managing director of Rahamaniyya Fertiliser Plant. In this interview with Josephine Okojie, he spoke about the country’s fertiliser industry and how his organisation is contributing to the sector’s growth.
What varieties of fertiliser is your factory producing for the Nigerian market?
At Rahamaniyya Fertilizer, we produce all kinds of NPK fertilisers. We are preparing NPK 20:10:10 fertiliser and NPK 15:15:15 fertilisers which are very famous among smallholder farmers in the country.
We aim to produce very good fertilisers for the farmers and in preparation for our various NPK varieties, we are using urea, DAP, MOP and limestone. Limestone is a raw material, but in preparation for the limestone, we have our products.
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The Rahamaniyya Fertilisers — NPK 20:10:10, NPK 15:15:15 are some of the best varieties in Nigeria. We have already given the sample to the Nigerian government and they have already approved the two as the best in Nigeria.
Our target is to give farmers pure fertilisers. Purity means that the elements used in the production of the fertilizer are pure. Nowadays in the market, we have seen so many varieties of limestone. The varieties we have checked in our laboratory are not pure, 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’ names and they can check what the properties are, and the quality that we are using. We are using pure ground limestone; there is no dust and no mud. So, purity, we can say, is 100 percent. If purity is there, that means it will yield more profit to farmers automatically. And our team is working according to that.
In terms of investments, what is the cost of the project and what is the production capacity of the plant?
We have two lines of NPK and each of the lines is designed for 60 metric tons (MT) per hour. That means we can say one line has a capacity of 1,414MT. The two lines have a capacity of 2,818 MT per day. That means we are capable of producing 2,818 MT per day of NPK.
We also have a limestone plant. The problem with 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 the completion stage. Within two months, the project would be completed. After the competition, we can run four plants at a time.
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. Rahamaniyya fertiliser is one of the biggest and highest-capacity plants in Nigeria. It’s a huge production.
There are similar fertiliser plants across Nigeria. What is Rahamanniyya doing differently to support farmers in the country?
Actually in Nigeria, a lot of fertiliser plants are available. The Dangote Fertilizer Plant, Indorama Fertiliser is in Port Harcourt, Rivers state and several others. Dangote and Indorama are only producing urea. But we are mixing the fertilisers. We are giving nitrogen, phosphorus, potash and limestone. That is why I’m saying our fertilizer is unique.
With the Rahamaniyah fertiliser coming on board, do you think this is enough to help bridge Nigeria’s supply-demand gap?
Yes. The high rate of fertiliser imports is a big problem we are facing in Nigeria. This is not good because we have most of the raw materials available in Nigeria. Sokoto state has a very huge quantity of limestone, so we are not depending on other countries for the urea.
We are producing our urea and after some time we are going to be producing our phosphate also. Phosphate is also available in Nigeria. The phosphate we are using as DAP and MOP, we can import from other countries. But the other three products are also available in Nigeria. With Rahamanniyya fertilizer Nigeria will not be dependent on the other countries because our product quality and our capacity output are high. It is sufficient for the Nigerian market.
How is your organisation supporting farmers?
Initially, I told you that so many fertilisers are available in the market. And I have checked because we are in the market, we are competing in the market, some old fertilisers are also there and we are the new fertiliser company. That is why we want to compete in the market.
So, what we are doing, we are taking samples from other fertiliser companies and we are doing sampling in our 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 are purchasing Rahamaniyya Fertiliser, 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 fertiliser farmers are purchasing. If farmers are using any of the Rahamaniyya Fertiliser brands it is equal to four bags of other fertiliser brands.
