Potash miners in myriad merger, buyout talks

Potash miners are proposing to snap each other up in a maze of merger and buyouts that may signal the start of a major reshaping of one of the more esoteric branches of the global mining industry.

A report on Mineweb.com notes that, "According to recent calculations by PotashCorp, it requires USD 2.8bn to finally commission a 2m tons a year potash mine from scratch, a process that takes seven years; the cost quoted excludes costs outside plant gates - rail, road networks, utility, port systems, and so on."

With the AZGS announcement last summer that Arizona holds as much as a quarter of the U.S. total potash resources, Arizona is ripe to become a serious factor in the global dynamics of what resources will be developed by what company. [right, cross section of Holbrook basin with potash layer in red. AZGS OFR 08-08-07]