AMAZON MINING (V-AMZ) $2.40 +0.18
We went to Brazil to see Amazon’s thermal fertilizer because
John Kaiser thought it was one of the top stories
out there. We came back a believer in the booming Brazilian
economy, the changing world economic order (there is
something to this BRIC thing) and aware of just how much
the Brazilians want the Amazon project to work.
Below is an update from Amazon’s VP, Jed Richardson:
“Despite market malaise over the past couple weeks
and David’s comments about our story getting boring, its
been a very exciting few weeks for fertilizer development
companies. We saw the acquisition of Athabasca Potash
by mining giant BHP for $340MM. Then a series of transactions
by Brazilian mining giant Vale (CVRD) to acquire a
controlling interest in Fosfertil a Phosphate business in
Brazil from international owners Bunge and Mosaic, in all
Vale has paid $5.7BB for Brazilian phosphate assets in the
past two weeks.
Last Thursday, February 11th, 2010, Brazil’s mining and
energy minister Edison Lobao, said “We must quickly
move to produce fertilizers here”, It was a part of a group
of statements made about government initiatives to encourage
industrial development. Our hope is that the government
will look for concrete ways to help companies in
Brazil develop domestic sources of fertilizer.
Vale’s big leap into phosphate is encouraging for us,
the real problem in Brazil is potash, 93% of the countries
requirements are imported compared to just 29% of phosphate.
Potash ranks in the top ten of Brazilian imports by
dollar value (2008 #6, 2009 #10)
The happenings of the past couple weeks have been
great confirmation that we are developing the right product
at the right address