Talent Shortage in the Fertilizer Industry: The Need for Succession Planning

In a time of evolving supply chains and geopolitical tensions, the fertilizer market faces uncertainty. HC Insider delves into the challenges, opportunities, and the pressing demand for skilled professionals in this increasingly fragmented industry.

• The fertilizer market faces significant challenges due to volatile supply chains and geopolitical tensions.
• A fragmented and asymmetrical market requires trusted partners to add liquidity and facilitate commercial trade.
• Mid-career professionals with knowledge of global markets and key players are in short supply.
• To support succession planning, companies are increasingly promoting less-experienced talent to fill leadership roles, opening new opportunities for ambitious professionals.

The global fertilizer market faces challenges on several fronts. Nitrogen prices have been fluctuating widely, leading to uncertainties in payments, exacerbated by trade sanctions causing supply disruptions. Record crop production in Brazil, Argentina, and the US in the 2022/2023 season has driven up fertilizer demand. Sustaining this trend is becoming more challenging as markets and countries continue to diverge.

Unlike earlier instances where Covid-related logistics bottlenecks increased prices without major supply chain disruptions, the current situation presents new complexities for well-integrated trade channels, such as geopolitical tensions between major fertilizer suppliers like China and Russia and Western markets. New intermediaries and payment channels have been needed to keep exports going, but at an increased cost, and most crucially, with increased uncertainty for mid-term supply sustainability.

Amid this uncertain landscape, market participants are also facing talent challenges in areas including compliance, as well as planning for the future.

Renewed importance of traders

Markets remain highly sensitive to any new disruptions, rendering speculation challenging. Price determination and forecasting have grown increasingly frustrating, as has the management of positions for importers and distributors. In such circumstances, trading intermediaries, which have somewhat receded over the past decade, may find renewed importance.

During the last oil boom a decade ago, traders specialized in the Ammonia market played a pivotal role by absorbing volumes from producers and enhancing liquidity across regions. However, post the 2008 financial crisis, fertilizer manufacturers shifted focus downstream, investing heavily in acquiring port facilities and distribution networks to ensure demand security.

Now, with deglobalization accelerating, producers in the West will need trusted partners to handle exports from major producing countries, particularly from those geopolitically decoupling from Western markets: China and Russia. Both nations are key players on the supply side of the industry’s value chain, not only due to their large production and export footprint but also due to the high dependency of key destination markets on their exports. For instance, countries like Brazil or Mexico cannot afford today to lose the influx of Russian fertilizer exports without risking a major blow or even partial collapse of their domestic agroindustry economic sectors.

Governments and stakeholders in markets highly dependent on China and Russia are investing efforts to maintain trading channels open with those countries and try to avoid any backsteps on the verticalization and producer-led investment in distribution channels witnessed since the early 2010s. Even if successful, several players along the pipeline already have restrictions imposed on trading with goods from certain origins, face payment delays or interruptions, and even bans on engaging with parties deemed non-compliant or from jurisdictions that cannot be worked with.

This new fragmented and asymmetrical market structure requires players that can add liquidity and facilitate commercial trade in the midst of an environment of deglobalization and increased mistrust between East and West. This scenario opens big opportunities for trading houses - be they traditional with renewed strength, or new entrants.

Succession planning gaps

The current market context also offers chances for young talented professionals with global reach experience not only in trade and risk management but crucially in back-office and operations: establishing flexible channels and procedures to engage with volatile payment, legal, and compliance restrictions is fast-becoming an essential skill to capture and realize margins in today's reality.

However, the fertilizer industry is facing a talent shortage, particularly in the 35-55 age range. During periods of reduced profitability, we have seen younger workers leave, creating succession planning gaps. Mid-career professionals with knowledge of global markets and key players are in short supply. The agriculture sector has traditionally struggled to attract and retain top talent during profitability downturns.

As experienced generations retire, companies in this sector will need to promote some less-experienced talent to fill leadership roles. Given the shortage of cross-functional experience, one potential solution is to divide leadership roles into multiple positions, distributing responsibilities across individuals based on geographical regions.

All these measures underline the multiple challenges facing the fertilizer industry – but also the opportunities for ambitious professionals to step up at an uncertain moment.