Yara

Yara
Quick Facts
Type	Public
sector	Fertilizer
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	Vlaardingen, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1929
Emissions (All Scopes)	3,3 Megatons of CO2 (NL, 2020)
Net Income	USD$ 1,028 billion (2020)
Key People	Michael Schlaug (CEO Yara Sluiskil) Gijsbrecht Gunter (Manager of External Affairs & Communication Yara Sluiskil)
Subsidiaries	In the Netherlands, Yara exists of Yara Sluiskil and Yara Vlaardingen.

Yara

Yara is a wellknown international company active in the business of fertilizers. The focus of this page is the Dutch branch of Yara. In the Netherlands, Yara is located in Sluiskil and in Vlaardingen. Yara Sluiskil is the largest fertilizer plant in North-western Europe, and in Vlaardingen Yara mainly produces soluble fertilizers, potting soil fertilizers and liquid fertilizers. Where accessible, data from the Dutch locations is used. Where no information is available or information from the mothercompany is more relevant, this information is used. The facts on the right of the page are based on information from the Dutch plants only.

Yara International

Yara, stylized as Yara, was founded in 1905 and currently operates an integrated business model with around 17000 employees and operations in over 60 countries. Yara claims to be the world’s leading fertilizer company and a provider of environmental solutions. In 2020, Yara’s reported revenu was 11.6 billion USD. Operating income was 1.1 billion USD. Net income was 690 million USD. Effective tax rate was 19%. Yara shares are traded at the Oslo Stock Exchange. Norwegian state owns most of the shares (36.2%). Norwegian private partners own 23.9%. The rest of the shares are primarily US or UK owned. Yara is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Yara’s balance sheet value was 1.6 billion USD in 2020.

Yara Netherlands

Yara has a plant in Sluiskil and a location in Vlaardingen.

Yara Sluiskil has been active since 1929 when it started producing ammoniumsulphate. Yara Sluiskil takes up about 15% of the total production volume of the entire Yara company. Yara Sluiskil employs 666 people and processes about 5 million tonnes of product on a yearly basis. Yara claims to have reduced its CO₂ emission from 2005 to 2015 by 60% while production increases by 1.5 million tonnes. Yara Sluiskil is the largest factory of articifial fertilizer in Northern Europe. According to the country by country report of Yara, the revenu of the different branches in the Netherlands was combined 1,028 billion USD. Profit before taxes is 2.1 billion USD. The profit is twice the revenu. Suspected is some tax structures are applied here. Yara Sluiskil makes a revenu of 835 million USD, profit before taxes is 141 million USD. These numbers deviate largely from the numbers circulating in the press. De Groene Amsterdammer published in 2018 that Yara Sluiskil had a revenue of 730 million EUR with a profit of only 33 million EUR.

Yara Vlaardingen produces water soluble fertilizers, potting soil fertilizers and liquid fertilizers targeting the fertigation segment. Also the marketing offices and commercial teams are located in Vlaardingen. Information on Yara Vlaardingen is very limited. There is no information available about remuneration of the direction or balance sheet value of Yara Netherlands.

Company Structure

Yara International

Yara is 50% owner of Yara Pilbara Nitrates Pty Ltd (Australia), 49% owner of Trinidad Nitrogen Co. Litd. (Trinidad) and 68% ownership of Yara Freeport LLC DBA Texas Ammonia (USA). Yara has a non-controlling interest in Yara Dallol (Netherlands).

Yara Netherlands

The Yara group consists of 127 legal entities Yara Nederland B.V. is the main parents to 15 of these legal entities. Next to that Yara Holding Netherlands B.V. is also registered in the Netherlands.

The information below on board of directors and supervisory board is all data from the mothercompany. There is very limited information on the directors of the Dutch branches.

Board of Directors Yara International

Yara Group Executive Board

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Svein Tore Holsether	Chief Executive Officer & President	720
Tove Anderson	Europe	378
Pål Hestad	Global Plants & Operational Excellence	187
Lars Røsæg	Chief Financial Officer	187
Kristine Ryssdal	Legal & HR	350
Terje Knutsen	Farming Solutions	355
Pablo Barrera Lopez	Communication & Procurement	350
Chrystel Monthean	Americas	193
Fernanda Lopes Larsen	Africa & Asia	80

These numbers exclude share-based remuneration and other benefits.

Yara International Board of Directors

Yara Board of Directors

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Trond Berger	Chair	773
Kimberley Lein-Mathisen	Vice-chair	40
Rune Bratteberg	Member	48
Håkon Reistad Fure	Member	44
Ragnhild Flesland Høimyr	Member	24
Øystein J. Kostøl	Member	24
Adele Bugge Norman Pran	Member	53
Geir O. Sundbø	Member	44
John Thuestad	Member	56
Brigitte Ringstad Vartdal	Member	29

These number exclude compensation in shares and dividend.

Yara Netherlands

Michael Schlaug is the general director of Yara Sluiskil. Gijsbrecht Gunter is the manager of external affairs and communicaion for Yara Sluiskil. No other information on the direction of Yara Sluiskil or Yara Netherlands can be found online.

Accountant

Deloitte is the independent auditor of Yara, both the parents company as well as most of the subsidiaries.

Main Activities

Yara is the worlds leading fertilizer company. One of Yara's main ingredients is ammoniak. This is a very high energy-consuming production process.

Government

The state of Norway and several norwegian pensionfunds are the main shareholders of Yara International. As far as publicly known, the Dutch government has no direct financial ties to Yara International nor Yara Netherlands. The Dutch government has influence on Yara throught the environmental laws in place. The Dutch and European legislators can and already have an impact on Yara's governance through the ETS system and complimentary Dutch CO₂ taxation system.

Paris Agreement to Today

What has company done or refused to do since the Climate Accord of Paris? Per company, where applicable refer to research on the benefits of fossil companies in the form of subisidies etc.

Financial Results since 2015

This tabel is meant to indicate that the companies have plenty of money to make their company more sustainable. Clearly distinguish between Dutch data and international data.

Financial situation

Year	Revenue	Profit	Dividend
2015	111.9 billion NOK	8.5 billion NOK	3.6 billion NOK
2016	97.2 billion NOK	6.3 billion NOK	4.1 billion NOK
2017	93.8 billion NOK	4 billion NOK	2.7 billion NOK
2018	13 billion EUR	141 million EUR	219 million EUR
2019	12.9 billion EUR	589 million EUR	203 million EUR
2020	11.7 million EUR	690 million EUR	926 million EUR
2021	n/a	n/a	n/a

Scandals and controversies

To be added.

Current Emissions

Yara International

‘’Planet’’ is weighed for 25% in the performance indicators based on which remuneration of the board executives is decided.

Yara is well positioned to meet is reduction target of 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Yara has the ambition to reduce scope 1 & 2 emissions by 30% in 2030. For scope 3 emissions, Yara awaits a sectoral approach for the entire industry.

Yara sees opportunities in clean ammonia. Yara wants to be a key player in the hydrogen economy. Yara is a partner in the Science Based Targets initiative

Yara’s emissions worlwide for scope 1 & 2 are reported at 17,7 million tonnes. Yara has the ambition to become climate neutral by 2050. 800000 tonnes CO₂ reduction. In 2020, Yara’s GHG emissions totalled 71.1 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalents (CO₂e) for scopes 1, 2, and 3 combined.

Yara Netherlands

Yara Sluiskil is the largest fertilizer plant in nort-western Europe. Their main ingredient is ammoniak, of which the production costs a lot of energy. 70% of the costs of Yara Sluiskil are electricity costs. Due to the high gas prices, Yara had to cut 40% of its production at the end of 2021. This was the case for the plant in the Netherlands as well as in other countries.

Yara Sluiskil has come from 5,8 megaton in 1990 to 3,6 megaton in 2018. 1,4 megaton is reused, so the netto emission is 2,2 megaton. In this line they have halved their emissions since 1990. However, the chemical sector is still one of the largest polluting sectors in the Netherlands. In 2020, the bruto emissions for Yara Sluiskil were 3,3 megatonnes. Critics say Yara had taken the easy steps to get tot his reduction. For example by reducing emissions of NOx. Yara states that a lot of their emissions is reused and can therefore not be accounted to them.

Despite Yara’s slogan ‘’Responsibly feed the world and protect the planet’’ they are high-ranking on multiple lists of large polluters. They are the fourth largest CO₂ emitter in the Netherlands with 2,5 megatonnes, number 13 on NOx (824000 kilo’s), number 2 on N2O (824000 kilo’s) and number 1 for NH3 (504000 kilo’s).

Total emissions since 2015 ( in megatonnes CO₂-eq.)

Year	Scope 1	Scope 2	Scope 3	Total
2015	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	3,762
2016	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	3,729
2017	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	3,828
2018	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	3,607
2019	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	3,5
2020	Unknown	Unknwon	Unknown	3,3
2021 (No report published yet)	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX

Yara only delivers a graph of their emissions in their Dutch sustainability report. There is no report per scope. Data from 2015 - 2018 is from a government report. Yara International reports emissions per scope, but does not specify per location so no data for Yara Netherlands can be deducted from the annual reports.

Climate Policy and Plans

Yara international

Our ambition is to become climate neutral by 2050, and to reach a milestone of a 30% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. The strategic pillars to reach these goals are accelerating operational excellence and expanding commercial reach and offering Yara plans to increase energy efficiency and reduce GHG emission intensity. However, subisdiaries and daughter companies are left out of these goals

We are contributing along two main avenues: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our own operations, and offering and exploring new, sustainable solutions for farmers and food companies as well as for a clean hydrogen and ammonia-based economy.

Performance measures for the climate goals of Yara are increasing the amount of hectares under management to 150 million (2025), reduction of GHG emissions intensity to 2,7 ton CO₂ per tonne nitrogen(2025), reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 emission by 30 percent in 2030, reduce energy intensiy (2023).

Yara plans to optimize energy efficiency in ammonia production, as this accounts for 80 percent of direct GHG emissions. Plan is to undertake regular interna land external benchmarking activities, and by carrying out efficiency diagnosis and audits, resulting in systematic improvement actions. However, benchmarks have proven that Yara’s plans are already 2.o percentage points better dan the 2016-2017 global average.

Yara aims to have all major production sites certified to ISO 500001 Energy Management stadard by 2022. .

Having reduced our GHG emissions by 45% since 2005, we are well-positioned to meet the EU 55% reduction target

Yara Netherlands

Yara has developed a climate roadmap to reduce net-emissions from 1,9 megaton (2020) to 0,7 megaton in 2030. Projects in this roadmap are reducing the rest of NOx emissions, reuse of heat, replacing gas turbines with electrical turbines, differentiating steam and electricity balance in factories, capture and making CO₂ liquid to store in empty gas fields. Yara also wants to use more CO₂ in their endproducts.

The climate roadmap has three main tracks:

• Track 1: Change and renew existing installations (-0,5 megaton)
• Track 2: Carbon capture and Storage (CCS) (-0,7 megaton)
• Track 3: Green Hydrogen (-0,1 megaton)

Yara Sluiskil plans to reduce emissions to zero by 2050.

Yara Sluiskil claims to have reduced their CO₂ footprint by 60% from 2005 to 2015, while increasing production by 1,5 million tonnes. In cooperation with Zeeland Seaports, Yara delivers CO₂ and heat to greenhouses in the proximity. Yara claims to reduce emissions by 0,135 Mtonnes by doing so Current emissions are around 1,9 megatonnes netto, of which 1,4 mtonnes is Carbon Capture and Storage. Bruto GHG emissions are around 3,4 mtonnes.

Yara claims the unrendable top of investment until 2030 is 1,5 billion euro’s. The price of prevented CO₂ emissions per ton would be 60-80 euro’s. Yara claims this is a small price in comparison to for example the price of electrical vehicles. Yara also claims that their production is up to four times as efficient as Chinese producers and therefore they need help to become more sustainable

Due Diligence

Keep the broader context in mind. Is the company integer when it comes to deforestation, palm oil, biodiversity, human rights etc etc? Be critical in the sources used here.

Conclusion

The dutch branch of Yara is part of a large, influential global fertilizing company. The dutch branch of Yara makes up for a fair share of Yara’s total production and the production of fertilizers in general. Profit margins of the dutch production are small, but the mothercompany is financially healthy. Yara has reduces emissions since 1990 with nearly 60%, but is still one of the larger polluters in the Netherlands. Yara relies mainly on technological solutions and reuse of CO₂ to reduce their emissions. The targets are in line with the Paris Agreement. Recent years however emissions only reduced slightly so reasonable effort is needed and expected to reduce emissions further.