DunhamTrimmer’s CTO Vatren Jurin shared insights and estimates for the specialty fertilizer market when speaking at New AG International’s Annual conference in Berlin at the beginning of April.

Jurin began by noting the lack of standardized definitions for specialty fertilizers and offered the DunhamTrimmer term of ‘Value-Add fertilizers’. He offered a definition for value-add fertilizer as being one that can be formulated with different permutations of the functional, or nutrient, component and the enhancing components, which can be either functional or performance.

When estimating the size of the global market, Jurin presented a figure of USD$ 19.3 billion based on data for 2022. By region, Asia/Pacific was the largest with $6.8 billion, with other regions for North America, Latam, Europe, Africa/Middle East all around $3 billion.

“Quantifying the value of this market was a very challenging endeavour, but one that ultimately yielded exceptional results,” Jurin told New AG International. “Since these end-use products are all unique combinations assembled from of a wide range of available funtional components, there are an infinite number of potential permutations we had to account for.”

DunhamTrimmer developed a proprietary algorithm that brought together the following critical factors:

• Percent Adoption per crop family of the use of Value Add Fertilizers
• Ratio of Row crop versus Specialty Crops in a given country or region
• IFA’s Mid term fertilizer consumption forecast
• Treatable Acres under Production for each specific crop and region
• Global average price per hectare of Value Add Fertilizers, used for foliar and for soil applications

“Without a doubt, we see steady and conservative growth in the space as more and more grower and agronomists around the world discover, test, and apply VAFs to an ever increasing amount of hectares. It is a classic case of expanded use that is directly proportional to our expanding base of knowledge and understanding of a technology’s potential,” said Jurin.

DunhamTrimmer aims to publish its report on the Value-Add Fertilizer market later in 2024.