K+S Potash maintains top employer status nationally and provincially
For a sixth time, K+S Potash Canada (KSPC) has been named one of Saskatchewan’s Top Employers. This designation follows being named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 2019, for a second consecutive year. Located northwest of Regina, KSPC’S Bethune mine is the first greenfield potash mine in Saskatchewan in nearly 50 years.
Saskatchewan’s Top Employers and Canada’s Top 100 Employers are based on criteria such as the physical workplace, employee benefits, performance management, training and skills development, and community involvement.
Sam Farris is the president and general manager of KSPC. Farris grew up on a farm in Shaunavon, southwest Saskatchewan, and has worked for the company since August 2011. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan.
Farris is honoured by the company’s continued recognition as one of the top employers in both Saskatchewan and Canada.
“We are certainly excited by this recognition as a top employer. It sounds like a cliché, but an employer is only as good as our team of employees. We are very proud of our employees and receiving these two designations again this year reflects our ‘people first’ culture,” says Farris.
The Bethune potash mine and production facility are K+S Group’s largest investment in North America and employs approximately 350 people. Parent company K+S AG is located in Germany and is traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange. KSPC’S other Canadian activities are based out of its corporate office in Saskatoon. The company also has a small group of employees at its potash handling and storage facility in Port Moody, British Columbia.
According to Farris, vacation and time-off policies, as well as a strong focus on formalized training and skills development are two areas where KSPC excels as an employer. Its ability to attract and retain employees is one way that the company differentiates itself in the competitive fertilizer sector.
“It was a unique situation because Bethune is new, and everybody was new, so more positive vacation time accrual was a necessity to attract and retain our employees. We also have personal days, known as Plus+ Time, for employees to take care of personal or family commitments. We recognize that our employees have other demands on their time, whether it be children, elder care or appointments mid-day that can’t be avoided. Our personal days create that flexibility.
“We also continue to build on our training and skills development program for employees.” Farris explains that this includes apprenticeships in the trades, plus an overall formalized and structured program to build each employee’s skill set in a way that is positively tied to that employee’s compensation.
In terms of KSPC’S community involvement, the company’s new focus is on young people. With “providing youth with access to more that matters” as its theme, the initiative has been cleverly called K+S Youth+us. The initiative supports opportunities for youth to engage, create and discover through education, leadership experiences, sports, art and culture.
“We wanted to be impactful with the money we have and focus our community investment on youth through our Youth+us initiative. Although most of our larger partnerships have a more provincial focus, we continue to support initiatives in the communities our employees and their families live: Moose Jaw, Regina, Saskatoon and the Bethune area.”
What is the outlook for the potash industry for the rest of 2019 and entering 2020? According to Farris, 2019 has been impacted by wet spring weather in the U.S. resulting in a weak planting season. This weather has been the “main factor” in a weak market environment for potash. In addition, international policy-related decisions have not helped. “We expect a recovery in terms of volume going forward,” says Farris.
China continues to have a temporary import ban on potassium chloride product. Brazil is another huge market for potash and Farris explains that U.S. weather conditions led to “displaced volume adding to the supply in Brazil.”
On September 23, 2019, K+S Group announced “K+S is responding to the current weak demand for potash by reducing fertilizer production for potassium chloride by up to 300 thousand tonnes by the end of 2019.” Other large players in the Saskatchewan potash sphere, such as the Mosaic Company and Nutrien, have also announced production curtailments for 2019.
Moving into 2020, according to K+S Group’s half-year 2019 financial report, “K+S has been planning for quite some time to ramp up the quality of the potash products manufactured at its new potash plant in Bethune, Canada, by the first half of 2020.” More information in the company’s K+S Youth+us initiative can be found at