Ports
Moving Our Products
Approximately 20 million tons of raw material phosphate rock are moved annually through IMC-Agrico’s facilities in rural Central Florida. From that base, the Company moves more than 8.5 million tons of finished phosphates and feed products from central Florida and southern Louisiana to remote locations all over the world. To do so, IMC-Agrico takes advantage of an extensive distribution system. This system includes pipeline, barge, truck, and two of the largest shipping terminals at the Port of Tampa (Port Sutton and Big Bend).
Additionally, the Company’s six locomotives and 160 railcar fleet operate over several miles of privately-owned track to keep product moving between mines and its three world class concentrated phosphate manufacturing plants. Phosphate rock and finished product are shipped via commercial rail and truck to various US destinations and to IMC-Agrico’s Port Sutton and Big Bend shipping terminals for US and overseas destinations.
Port Sutton, IMC-Agrico’s deep-water shipping terminal, is located on 114 acres on Tampa Bay. It is from here that the company's Florida phosphate products begin their final journey to customers around the globe. The terminal, built in 1964, has two berths - one for outgoing cargo and the other for incoming ammonia. Efficient loading equipment can place up to 1,000 tons of product per hour onto vessels with capacities ranging from 38,000 to 52,000 tons. With approximately 7 million tons of cargo leaving the port each year, Port Sutton ships the largest volume of product of any terminal at the Port of Tampa. About 95 percent of the shipments are export. The only exceptions are barge loads of phosphate livestock feed ingredients and some triple superphosphate (GTSP), which are moved across the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River for distribution to domestic markets.
About 100 employees are responsible for outgoing shipments of five products: phosphate rock, phosphate-based livestock feed ingredients, granular triple super phosphate (GTSP), monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and diammonium phosphate (DAP). Additionally, 1 million tons of anhydrous ammonia enter the port each year. The anhydrous ammonia is unloaded from vessels and stored in a 50,000-ton refrigerated tank until it is heated and transported through the 35 miles of pipeline that extends to the New Wales and Nichols fertilizer plants where it is used to make ammoniated phosphate crop nutrients.
This 230-acre terminal, built in 1975, is the direct link between IMC-Agrico's central Florida phosphate rock mines and its Louisiana fertilizer plants on the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The terminal also distributes shipments of granular triple superphosphate (GTSP) to international and domestic destinations. Big Bend handles about five million tons of wet phosphate rock and a half-million tons of GTSP annually. It is the only terminal at the Port of Tampa that handles wet phosphate rock, which arrives from the mines on 65-car unit trains. At the terminal, a rotary car dumper grips, rotates and empties each 100-ton carload of phosphate in just two minutes.