LONDON (Alliance News) - Sirius Minerals PLC Monday said it has got encouraging results from crop studies on potatoes and tomatoes that showed the effectiveness of the polyhalite product it hopes to produce from the York Potash project.
The company is primarily focused on developing a potash mine near York, and is trying to get planning permission for the site.
In the meantime, it is conducting a global crop trial using the product it hopes to produce - polyhalite powder and granulated product - to prove it is an effective yield enhancer for cereal, vegetable and animal feed crops.
The latest update from its ongoing global crop study programme focused on potato and tomato crop studies at the University of Sao Paulo in Brasil.
It said that the trials showed that Polyhalite applied as a straight fertilizer improved tomato yield by 6% over the control and 15% as a blend component. It also improved the taste and shelf-life of the fruit.
The potato trial showed that using a polyhalite blend achieved the same yield using 68% less product than the local commercial option, suggesting a polyhalite blend option offers a lower cost, higher nutrient content and is a more efficient product than a commercial alternative, it added.
"Tomatoes and potatoes are two very large markets globally and these results further demonstrate that polyhalite provides the farmer with an economical option to lower input costs, increase yields and get an overall better quality product," said Chirs Fraser, managing director and chief executive of Sirius.
The latest crop trial update follows similar results from other trials. In March the company said it got encouraging results from crop studies on corn and rice.
Last year, it had said POLY4 proved to be an effective and valuable fertiliser based on yield and quality performance on major crops such as corn, cotton, oilseed rape and wheat. In also got "an outstanding set of results" in a trial on tomatoes, and said POLY4 could increase cabbage yields after a trial in which it outperformed an existing potash fertiliser and a potassium alternative.
In February, it also reported encouraging results from silage corn trials at the University of Warwick in the UK showed a 52% increase in nitrate use efficiency, and a 44% greater potassium uptake over muriate of potash, leading to a 38% increase in dry matter yield over muriate.
Toward the end of February, it said results from a completed corn study at the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Science and a rice study undertaken with Nanjing Institute of Soil Science showed that polyhalite increased plant yields and vitality compared with using muriate of potash.
Sirius shares were up 7.4% at 18.25 pence Monday morning. The stock has risen nearly 70% so far in 2015 as the company has moved closer to getting planning permission for its project which sits on the edge of the North York Moors National Park.
The North York Moors National Park Authority will hold a special planning committee meeting at the end of June. Planning officers at the Park authority have told Sirius that the report that will be presented to that meeting is likely to include an "open recommendation" for authority members to consider, which will mean members can make a determination based on the relevant planning consideration.
In April, Sirius received a "positive decision" from Redcar and Cleveland Borough council concerning its planning application for its proposed materials handling facility for the project in Teeside. The handling facility will receive, handle, granulate and store the polyhalite produced from the project.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1
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