Sales volumes for Specialty Plant nutrition have grown at a healthy pace, said SQM’s Chief Executive Officer Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez, when giving the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call.

“We also saw an upward trend in prices early in this year, mainly due to a strong demand for potassium chloride and some supply disruptions. Market dynamics remain favourable across Latin America, the US and Europe,” he said.

Demand for lithium in electric vehicle battery production has driven growth during Q1. The Chilean company achieved its highest first quarter lithium sales volumes, driven by a 20% year-on-year increase.

As a result, the company will focus more production from its brine lakes in the Atacama Desert on the production of lithium.

“In our potassium business, as anticipated, volumes were significantly lower compared to the same period last year. This reflects our strategy to reduce potassium production to give priority to high lithium content brines and focus on the production of more value-added products within our SPN business lines,” said Rodríguez on the 28 May call.

Despite the company’s strong start to the year in sales volumes, the price of lithium has been lower than expected, according to one of the analysts on the call. SQM’s Chief Financials Officer Gerardo Illanes said that the company was “far from breakeven cost” and that they believe they are one of the lowest cost producers.

The lower sales price will mean less operating cash flow to fund the company’s capex growth, continued the analyst. This might mean SQM has to access the capital markets. In responding, Illanes noted that SQM has other products that are doing well. “So the capacity to generate cash that the company has is quite strong. On top of that, we have a strong balance sheet.”

For more insight to agribusiness in Latin America, join us at New AG International’s upcoming event Biocontrol & Biostimulants LATAM, 28-30 July, Campinas, Sao Paulo state, Brazil.