Astrategic change in the way Yara Fertiliser is distributing its products in Mozambique and surrounding countries has led to a decision by the company to invest in a storage and blending plant in Beira.
According to Yara’s supply chain and operations manager, Ben van Wyk, creating an operational hub in Beira with blending and shipping to order provides many benefits to distributors and farmers in the region. There are many advantages stemming from the decision to establish an operational hub and the valueadding blending plant in Beira. It is helping to move the focus in Beira from being a pure transit of goods port and starting to add value for stakeholders across the board.
“One of the biggest issues facing Yara is providing better access to quality products for our customers in the region in a cost-effective way. The supply chain was simply not cost effective,” says Van Wyk. “Now, with Beira being developed as the regional hub, we can lower the supply chain costs,” he says.
This will enable Yara to safely and efficiently handle, store and distribute high-quality nitratebased fertilisers to the region. In addition, bulk fertilisers will be imported and blended to order in Beira and delivered directly to the customer within a “practical timeframe”.
“We can deliver to the farthest corner of Zambia within seven to 10 days of the placement of the order. Delivery elsewhere in the region is five to six days excluding border delays,” Van Wyk adds. The plant in Beira serves Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “The system now eliminates a number of logistics steps. We deliver directly to the bigger commercial farmers or to the agency that issued the tender for the fertiliser.
“Small-scale farmers in remote regions are supported through hub agro dealers,” he says, adding, “in the past bulk fertiliser was sent to distribution points in the region based on demand forecasts. “This presented a challenge with inventory management, product stewardship and stock turnover, which directly impacted costs through additional handling and storage, ultimately affecting the end user – our farmers.” Unforeseen impacts such as drought, low commodity pricing and changing crop rotation practices in the region also made it increasingly difficult to anticipate demand. With the new operational model bulk material is delivered from the vessel directly to IBLT facilities where Yara has installed the blending plant.
“Cargoes come either as breakbulk directly from the vessel or containerised bulk, to reduce the costs of handling and increase operational efficiency,” he says. J&J Group operate the blending plant and bagging operations, and handle the forwarding and clearance on behalf of Yara. “We have invested in this to increase the accessibility of Yara’s own produced nitrate-based NPKs (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilisers), calcium nitrate and CAN (calcium ammonium nitrate) -based products.
“Additionally, the high-volume blender will produce a highquality product during the process, at increased efficiency.” says Van Wyk. The blender makes it possible to create a wide variety of differentiated blends. They are mixed according to the demands of specific crop nutrition requirements. “This builds on our global farmer-centric strategy which is focused on providing strong agronomic knowledge and high-quality products, delivered within an efficient supply chain model – ultimately bringing higher returns for the farmer.
“This is a good initiative by Yara which will help get fertiliser prices down,” adds Jonathan Middleton, general manager of BLT. BLT will be investing in another bagging plant to handle the new demand.
“We hope that we will see more third-party logistics operations being set up in Beira to address unemployment and to help grow the local economy,” says Van Wyk.
We can deliver to the farthest corner of Zambia within seven to 10 days of the placement of the order. – Ben van Wyk The Yara facility in Beira
