Last year, as part of the merger with United Suppliers, we welcomed Crop Nutrients to WinField United’s total agronomic suite of products and services.
For those unfamiliar, Crop Nutrients is a fast-growing business focused on providing market intelligence tools, risk management and supply chain optimization services, in addition with commodity fertilizers, to our retail owners. Today, the Crop Nutrients business has three groups:
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Ag fertilizers makes up a majority of the business and focuses on market intelligence services and supplying product to owners through optimized supply chains.
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Transportation Express, Crop Nutrients’ freight team, has significant expertise in importing ocean vessels, coordinating barge and rail logistics and manages a successful truck freight business.
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The industrial business focuses on selling products into adjacent markets such as sourcing MAP and urea for animal feed, selling nitrogen products to ethanol facilities or importing automotive grade urea.
It’s in this third, industrial area where the WinField United Crop Nutrients team is excited to announce their expansion into the diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) market.
“Over the past 18 months, the team has been developing alternate supply options on DEF for our retail owners in the Midwest on a pilot basis,” says Todd Minnihan, vice president of the Crop Nutrients business. “We finalized several supply agreements with our fertilizer providers this past quarter and can now offer DEF to a broader group of owners.”
What is DEF?
DEF is made from a special grade of urea that has tight specifications on impurities. It is melted or diluted to a 32.5 percent solution with deionized water. For members who have purchased new equipment for your operation in the past few years or for retailers with a significant fuel business, you are either buying DEF for your own use or marketing it to your fuel customers. For those of you outside of this group, DEF is a fluid that new diesel engines must utilize along with Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology to reduce nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions.
“Our market intel places WinField United in a unique position to provide insights on the DEF market to our retail owners and our relationships with manufacturers and expertise in supply chain optimization will allow us to help retail owners. We are looking forward to working with our retail-owners’ energy managers over the next several months to determine if we can service your DEF needs,” says Todd. “However, if you have an immediate need, please feel free to contact our team to see if we can help you with sourcing options right away.”
Contact information:
You can also learn more about Crop Nutrient’s full suite of offerings here.