Fertilizer maker Mosaic Co. has evacuated some of its Florida operations as Hurricane Ian prepares to make landfall.

All of our Florida locations have been secured with some “fully evacuated,” Mosaic spokesman Bill Barksdale said Wednesday in an email. The state is home to Mosaic’s phosphate rock assets, where they mine product, and to facilities where they turn that rock into crop fertilizers.

Ian’s current trajectory has it passing near Tampa, through the bulk of Mosaic’s facilities. The facilities are expected to remain closed for at least a week due to the hurricane, a hit that could see third quarter revenue fall by $240 million to $300 million, Bloomberg Intelligence said Wednesday in a note. Ammonia imports from Yara International and CF Industries at Tampa may also slow. 

The storm is on a path similar to Hurricane Irma in 2017, when Mosaic lost about 400,000 metric tons of finished phosphate products, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Eoin Treacy's view

One of Mosaic’s primary phosphate mines is between Tampa and Orlando. There is clear  flooding risk in the region. The defining characteristic of recent hurricanes has been slow movement and elevated rainfall totals. The supply chain for fertilisers is already under stress so this hurricane is unlikely to be good news.
Mosaic continues to continue to hold its two-year sequence of higher reaction lows.

Nutrien continues to bounce from the region of the trend mean.

Seed producer, Corteva, is also firming from the region of the trend mean.
Most of Florida’s orange groves are also between Tampa and Orlando so this hurricane is likely to affect many of them. The price was limit up initially today but gave up some of the advance by the close. It is still in a reasonably consistent medium-term uptrend.