Vale Looks To Expand Fertilizer Business

Brazil's Vale VALE, Latin America's second-largest company by market value, is looking to expand its fertilizer business throught the creation of a new company, Vale Fertilizantes. The company has earmarked $12 billion to be spent on new projects and acquisitions in fertilizers in the next three years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Vale had been rumored to be interested in Potash Corp. POT after BHP Billiton BHP made its $38.6 billion offer for the Canadian fertilizer giant, but a Vale offer never came to fruition. Vale plans to pursue new, smaller deals, coupled with investments in its own mining projects, that have the potential to make it the world's biggest fertilizer producer, the Journal reported. Vale has since said large-scale acquisitions are probably not in the cards for its fertilizer business. The Journal said Vale has Anglo American's Brazilian fertilizer business, Copebras, and Paranapanema SA, a metals company which also has fertilizers operations, on its shopping list. Vale is looking to boost its potash out to to 10.7 million tons a year by 2017, a 10-fold increase, but that would still make the company smaller than Potash and Mosaic MOS when ranked by total production of the crop nutrient. Earlier this year, Vale paid $3.8 billion to acquire Bunge's BG Brazilian fertilizer operations.