OCP posts 53 pct slide in net ‘profit’

RABAT, March 26, (RTRS): Morocco’s Office Cherifien de Phosphate (OCP), the world’s leading phosphate exporter, posted a 52.8 percent fall in full-year net profit, the company said on Thursday.

State-run OCP, a major foreign currency earner for Morocco, has been hit by a slide in phosphate and fertiliser prices, prompting efforts to increase production and cut costs to counter falling revenue.

Net profit fell to 3.78 billion dirhams ($379 million) in 2016 from 8.01 billion dirhams a year earlier, the company said in a statement published in Le Matin newspaper.

Consolidated revenues fell last year to 42.47 billion dirhams from 47.74 billion dirhams, company data showed. OCP is also targeting an increase in fertiliser production to 12 million tonnes to become the world’s leading producer. It recently signed a 50-50 joint-venture agreement with India’s Kribhco for a new fertilizer plant in the Indian region of Andhra Pradesh with an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tonnes. It has also signed a deal with the Ethiopian government to build a $3.7 billion plant to produce fertilizers in eastern Ethiopia.

OCP Chief Executive Mostafa Terrab was quoted in Morocco’s L’Economiste newspaper on Thursday as saying the company’s mining capacity had “significantly progressed”.

“International demand remains strong as a whole, with an increase in fertilizer consumption held up by a drop in prices,” the company said in a statement in the paper.