Joc O’Rourke : Well, I think that’s exactly what I said in the prepared questions. Joel, thank you, by the way for the questions. And thank you for the comments. Yeah, so if you look at this, we expect to see Belarus bring out about another million tonnes, we expect your Uralkali to bring out probably another million tonnes. And then EuroChem with their Volga Cali mine, which is ramping up now and recognize that it’s been a pretty slow ramp up. But if we got 0.5 million to 700,000 tons between your [Indiscernible] and Volga Cali, there, you’re at — now you’re at 2.7 million tonnes add another million tonnes from Laos. And you’re pretty much at that gap. And that’s what I was saying. If those players — and then probably likely up to — maybe, and I say maybe a million tonnes for Canpotex, which would mean that that is satisfied that difference between 65 million and 70 million tonnes.
So our share of Canpotex of that would be 300,000 or 400,000 tonnes. At which point we wouldn’t need Cab –we wouldn’t need Colonsay for 2024. Otherwise Colonsay wouldn’t be needed. But again, those are based on expectations that these other players bring up those tonnes. If it plays out different if they do better last year, I think Belarus did better than what we expected. Will they continue that ramp? We think that’s unlikely, but we’ll see how it plays out. So I don’t think there’s any inconsistency in how we’re looking at it. We see tonnage being similar to what it is this year, with the exception of maybe 300,000-400,000 tonnes for Canpotex. And North America’s had a very good year. I’m not sure I’ll probably will continue. And then the one thing I will say on all of it is, Canpotex has never done those levels of tonnage.
And not because the mines can’t supply it, but the logistics and the market haven’t the market hasn’t needed or the logistics haven’t supported it. Last year, while the year before last, we had floods. We had rail problems, we had fires. This year, we’ve had port strikes, we’ve had failures at ports, more port strikes, it just isn’t thinking that we’re going to jump up by 2 million or 3 million tonnes I just don’t think is realistic. So I don’t know how you put that in your model Joel, but you’re going to have to try.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Ben Theurer with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Ben Theurer: Hi, good morning. And as well from my side Joc, all the best for retirement enjoy that peace. Now all my question wanted to go back to some of the phosphate comments you made and the projects and looking into PPA for LSP and those investments clearly something that that’s come up more frequently as a solution to the electrification of some light vehicles. So if we think about how you’re positioned and maybe the capex needs. Can you help us put that into perspective, just what would you think this might cost you to build this out? And what’s like the expected return profile of that business? That will be much appreciated. Thank you.
Joc O’Rourke : Okay, thanks, Ben. Yeah. So at this stage, we’re at the, I would say early feasibility stage moving into the design phase to get to a final, let’s call it a bankable feasibility to do all this. So the numbers are pretty preliminary. What we’ve looked at so far, though, has been for purified phosphoric acid and potentially building a powder plant, which would be the precursor to a lithium iron phosphate cathode. So at this stage, we’re probably looking at 100,000 tonnes of purified phosphoric acid at our Louisiana facility. And our expectation of cost is probably in the range of $0.5 billion to build that. Now, obviously, we have to look at the long term demand profile and what we can expect for pricing. But what we’ve seen so far is first phase has got a strong, higher than well over a cost of capital return.
And then if we go future phases, obviously the capital per ton decreases, and that return gets better as we go forward. But we’re going to do it in a modular way, by doing it in a modular way, we will reduce the long term risk, market risk, et cetera, et cetera. And what we’re seeing, though, from a qualitative perspective, is due to the expense of nickel, cobalt, et cetera, there is a strong trend towards lithium iron phosphate batteries, not only for electric vehicles, but also for stationary power. And particularly, our view is that, while electric vehicles will be the early growth engine, long term, you will need these stationary batteries to make up for the variability of both solar and wind. They don’t tend to come at exactly the same time as demand.
So you have to have some level of buffering.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from John Roberts at Mizuho. Please go ahead.
John Roberts : Thanks. And best wishes Joc and congrats, Bruce. I’m looking at Slide 7 and the hand deck on under application versus yield. Obviously, the bottom line is that most of the world is in the left quadrant. But are there any other key takeaways from those slides?
Joc O’Rourke : I think the key takeaway there from my perspective, John, and again, thanks for the question. I think this is — so intuitively, we’ve been saying for a long time that fertilization is what drives plant growth. I mean if you don’t feed any organism, they don’t grow. But what we haven’t been able to do in the past, I guess, is really show the relationship in a clear way. Now what we’ve seen here is under application and probably mining of the soil, even with both of those, we’re seeing a clear relationship between the yields and particularly phosphate and potash usage. Now you see the nitrogen, which is more likely to be used in first, and you see particularly when you look at Asia, which includes India, where the over application of nitrogen actually isn’t helping yields at all, whereas the under application of phosphate and potash really is hurting yields.
And if you do the math on those things, if you take phosphate and potash application into account and then you look at the yield loss, it’s about a two to one price of fertilizer to yield loss. So in other words, if you’re saving $10 on fertilizer, you’re losing $20 on yield. So the point here is farmers are incented to properly fertilizer field, and they cannot afford to continue to mine the soil.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Vincent Andrews : Thank you. And let me echo the comments, Joc, congratulations on retirement and a pleasure working with you all these years. In terms of my question, I wanted to ask a bit more on the Brazilian market and some of the comments that were made in terms of the safrinha season, and it sounds like you’re pretty optimistic about application rates there. And I just maybe you’re getting good intelligence from your fertilized on taste business versus some of the other comments that are out there. But there is commentary and some data suggesting that planted acreage is going to be down on corn. Maybe some of us can go to cover crops and some of the grower associations are talking about or advising their growers to maybe back off on inputs. But are you seeing on the ground that the demand and the shipments and so forth is quite strong ahead for that season? Or what’s giving you the confidence about this?
