Future Plans Include New Granulation Plant

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 22

Future Plans Include New Granulation Plant

' The completion of its new sulphuric acid plant is but one step in the continued development of the Hornby Chemical Fertiliser Works. A new granulation plant is being designed and this will transform the present powdered superphosphate, with its problems of handling and distribution, to a

more free-flowing and therefore more easily handled fertiliser. The patented process to be used was developed a few years ago by an Australian fertiliser company and its success has been so great that a considerable proportion of Australian superphosphate is now granulated by this method. A similar granulation plant has just been completed at Kemp-

thorne Prosser and Company’s Westfield Works at Auckland, and the product has achieved instant success with farmers and both bulk and aerial spreaders. Unlike the granulated fertilisers made by European and American methods, the Australian process produces a range of particle sizes and this assists a wider spread, so essential when distributed from either air-

craft or bulk spreaders. The more free-flowing properties of the granulated fertiliser will also assist when used from farmers’ own drills or tractor-mounted bulk distributors. Granulation processing costs have been cut so drastically by the new process that the granular fertiliser will be sold at the same price as powdered fertiliser. Extension of other manufacturing plant has kept pace with the manufacturing potential of the new sulphuric acid plant. A new grinding plant, for grinding the phosphate rock to be mixed with the acid in the manufacture of superphosphate, will shortly be completed. The new grinding mill, the largest model made by the Bradley Pulveriser Company, of London, will supplement a smaller model of the same type, installed in 1954. Bradley mills are used almost exclusively in the New Zealand fertiliser industry, and of the first nine of the largest models to be produced, six were ordered by New Zealand fertiliser companies. The total expenditure on new plant and machinery for the Hornby Works will total more than £BOO,OOO between January, 1966, and June, 1967.