ALLAN, Sask. — A lot has changed since Nutrien produced and shipped the first 1,000 tonnes of potash from its Patience Lake mine in 1959.

For instance, the price of potash was around US$50 per ton back then. It is six times that value today, and this is a down year for prices.

One thing that hasn’t changed all that much in the 65 years that have elapsed are the boring machines used to excavate the mineral.

They are, of course, more sophisticated than they used to be, but the technology is essentially the same.

The big advancement in the mining process is the conveyor belt systems used to bring the ore to the surface, rather than filling up trolleys.

And then there’s the shear scope of the operation. Nutrient’s mine in Allan stretches 20.8 kilometres north to south and 14.8 km east to west.

The furthest mining face is located 19 kilometres from the shaft, which is a 60-minute drive on the mine’s underground road system located one km below the Earth’s surface.

There is a total of 90 km of conveyor belt lines sprawling underground with skips that hold 54 tonnes of payload.

The shaft production hoist uses a 12,200-horsepower motor and operates at speeds up to 3,600 feet per minute.

The mill can produce more than 12,000 tonnes per day of finished product. More than 70 rail cars can be loaded in a 12-hour shift, which amounts to 7,200 tonnes of red and white potash.

And that is from only one of the company’s six Saskatchewan mines.

Nutrien is the world’s largest potash producer with 20.6 million tonnes of annual nameplate capacity, although actual production is closer to 15 million tonnes.

It has 5,900 owned or leased rail cars that transport its product either to the United States or to ports, where it is sent to more than 40 overseas markets.

The company is the largest private sector employer in Saskatchewan with a workforce of more than 4,200 employees.

Les Frehlich, general manager of the Allan mine, said the future of the potash sector remains bright after all those years of mining the red ore.

“The outlook is for (demand) to grow annually as the world population increases and diets change,” he said during a recent media tour of the facility.

“That’s going to continue to drive potash demand.”

The world’s population is growing at a rate of 0.87 percent per year, but there is also a rising middle class. That means people are eating more meat, which requires more feed crops such as corn that are heavy users of potash.

He anticipates potash demand will continue growing by two to 2.5 percent per year.

Josh Linville, a fertilizer analyst with StoneX, thinks that demand outlook is spot on. However, he worries about the other side of the balance sheet.

“I’ve always tried pumping the brakes on saying oversupplied, but I think it’s going to be very, very well supplied,” he said.

There were a lot of new projects announced in 2022 when prices were at record-high levels.

“It’s very easy during those times to say, ‘yes, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that,’ because margins are absolutely insane,” he said.

A lot of those plans have gone by the wayside now that prices have plummeted, but some major projects are still underway.

BHP Billiton’s US$10.5 billion project in Jansen, Sask., is expected to start production in late 2026. Once fully ramped up, it will become one of the world’s largest mines, producing 8.5 million tonnes per year.

EuroChem has started the second construction phase of its Usolskiy Complex in Russia, which will add 1.8 million tonnes of production to that plant by 2027.

Asia-Potash International, a Chinese company, is investing $4.3 billion in a potash mining venture in Laos, which could be producing five million tonnes annually by 2025 and as much as 10 million tonnes down the road.

Linville said North American farmers are often sitting on pins and needles when it comes to sourcing nitrogen and phosphate from war-torn or politically volatile regions of the world.

“Potash is one we don’t need to worry about because we have it here at home and that’s a huge, huge relief,” he said.

Canada exported 23 million tonnes of potash in 2023, followed by Russia’s 11 million tonnes and Belarus’s five million tonnes, according to Global Trade Tracker.

Total global exports amounted to 54 million tonnes that year.

Brazil was the world’s biggest importer in 2023, purchasing 13 million tonnes, followed by China at 12 million and the U.S. at nine million tonnes.

About one-third of Nutrien’s potash is sold in North America, with the vast majority of that volume being shipped directly by rail to customers in the U.S. Only a small amount is consumed domestically in Canada.

Soil in Western Canada is rich in potash, but contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with the large deposit of the mineral located one kilometre below the Earth’s surface.

Frehlich said the types of crops grown in Western Canada are not heavy users of potash, which would be crops such as corn, oil palm and rice.

There is no direct mention of potash as an input in Saskatchewan’s 2024 Crop Planning Guide, while nitrogen is listed as the most expensive input for some of the main crops grown in the province.

The remaining two-thirds of Nutrien’s potash is sold to offshore markets.

China, India, Brazil and Southeast Asia are the biggest overseas customers. The potash is moved by rail to ports, where it is exported by Canpotex through terminals located at Vancouver, Portland, Thunder Bay and St. John’s.

Justin Boehm, mill maintenance superintendent at the Allan mine, said it sells four types of fertilizer.

Red standard is the most popular product, accounting for 53 per cent of the mine’s annual production. It is hand applied in markets such as Indonesia’s palm oil sector.

Granular red fertilizer is getting more popular as farming becomes more mechanized around the world. It accounts for 33 per cent of the mine’s production.

White soluble product is 99.8 per cent pure potassium potash. It makes up 10 per cent of the mine’s annual production.

“That’s sold to our industrial customers, and they’ll repurpose that into several different types of products, including pharmaceuticals, food-grade potassium and those kinds of things,” said Boehm.

White chicklets are made for customers of white potash who don’t want any type of anti-caking agent applied to their fertilizer. It accounts for four per cent of production.

Potash is selling for about $300 per ton today, which is below the 10-year average of $350 to $380.

“It’s a little bit depressed,” said Frehlich.

Prices shot up well above $1,000 at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“There was a concern worldwide around potash supply,” he said.

“Some countries started to stock up on potash, and that drove prices up.”

The fear was that Russia and Belarus wouldn’t be able to get their product to market, but the logistical quagmire did not materialize, and the market now has ample supplies.

Frehlich said every dollar counts for a mine such as Allan.

“It doesn’t take much to make a difference when you’re making three million tonnes per year,” he said.

The company as a whole sold 13.2 million tonnes of potash in 2023, generating $3.76 billion of revenue, which was less than half the amount earned the previous year when the average price was 55 per cent higher.