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Although the first two fertilizer factories would have had to reopen on August, 1, InterAgro delayed their restart for the second half the month, market sources told energynomics.ro.
“Every restart of a factory is costing us in excess of one million euros,” the sources said.
InterAgro closed its fertilizer factories last month, and the owner Ioan Niculae deemded the high price of gas, even compared to foreign markets, to stop sending output and sending into unemployment over 6,000 employees. The six chemical plants consume about 3 billion cubic meters of gas.
Thus, Romania has now just one producer of fertilizers, Azomureş. OMV is another player, interested to import to the Romanian market. Gas prices count for 80% of the cost of a fertilizer maker. “Every active factory today brings losses of 1.5 million dollars per month, USD 9 million in total”, previously said InterAgro’s owner, Ioan Niculae.
Prohibitive gas price has overlapped with the economic downturn in the fertilizer market, an oversupply generating low prices so that the work is ineffective, says the businessman.
Recently, Minister of Economy, Constantin Nita, announced that the Government will launch a program to help large industrial consumers of gas, the model of dedicated large electricity consumers, through which more than 100 companies have been exempted from a number green certificates.
