Fertoz (ASX:FTZ) executive chairman Pat Avery speaks to Proactive Investors about the integrated organic fertiliser producer's end to end operations, and also about organic standards and markets as a whole.
The company mines phosphate at a number of projects in Canada and the USA, and processes it into a range of organic fertilisers sold in North America and Australia. Its phosphate rock has been certified by the Canadian Organic Standards (COS) and the USDA National Organic Program.
"We really went back to basics. We wanted to find where good phosphate was, we wanted to make sure it was close to a marketplace... we also looked at agrinomics... so we mine, crush, screen, but then we put it in a form that's most predominantly used by growers, either powder or granulated. All of that process is tracked... to keep our standards intact," says Avery.
According to Avery, organic crops bring in approximately double the margin of traditional crops, thus organic inputs represent a premium product to farmers. Fertoz projects sales of 100,000 tonnes in 2020.
Avery says "it's a very attractive field... Our goal is to help the organic distributors and dealers, and the organic growers, receive a great margin for yield increases and for the product. And for Fertoz, we're going to bring that margin return in value back to our shareholders."