SOFIA (Bulgaria), November 13 (SeeNews) – The Bulgarian unit of U.S. Acid & Fertilizers will likely halt production for several months as of November 21 due to the global financial crisis, Standart daily reported on Thursday.
“Gradual shutting down of capacities will start on Friday,” Standart quoted Krasimir Berbenkov, deputy chief executive of Agropolychim, as saying.
The key reasons for the move are a fall in exports and local farmers’ shortage of funds as a result of frozen EU financing, he said.
Agropolychim, Bulgaria’s biggest fertilizer producer, employs 1,100. It exports some 60% of its annual output of around 1.0 million tonnes of fertilizers and farming products, according to Standart. No details about the fall in exports were available.
Agropolychim may be forced to significantly reduce personnel if the shutdown continues for too long, said Berbenkov, but did not elaborate. He added that production at the plant may be restarted in February 2009 if the domestic market revives.
Berbenkov was not immediately available to comment on Thursday.
The European Commission froze 272.2 million levs ($174.3 million/140.5 million euro) in payments to Bulgarian farmers earlier this year under the EU's Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) due to irregularities in the absorption of funds.
The company said earlier it planned to produce 500,000 tones of nitrogen fertilizers and 250,000 tonnes of phosphates for the fiscal year ending in August. This compares to some 600,000 tonnes for the previous fiscal year, when the company had a 55-day non-foreseen halt of operations due to a problem with the electricity supply.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)