ROLE

The European Fertilizer Manufacturers Association represents the major fertilizer manufacturers in Europe. Its members account for approximately 81 percent of the region's nitrogen fertilizer capacity and around 55 percent of phosphate fertilizer capacity (EU-25 and Norway). The issues that the industry devotes its attention to may be matters that have prompted concern within the industry itself (related, for example, to its competitiveness, its profitability or even its existence); they may, on the other hand, have arisen in other sectors of society in connection with the production or use of fertilizers.

The industry produces nutrients essential for plant growth. It offers a wide range of products, each of which contains one or more of the several nutrients required by the plant. The most important of these are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), all of which originate from naturally-occurring raw materials. The principal products supplied by the European producers are the straight nitrogen fertilizers, such as calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN), ammonium nitrate (AN), urea, and urea ammonium nitrate solutions (UAN), and compound fertilizers, which contain a variety of both macro and micro nutrients.