High-grade Australian phosphate rock will be exported to India for the first time as that country’s growing agricultural sector demands insatiable amounts of fertiliser.

Mined in a remote part of north-west Queensland between Mount Isa and Dajarra, the phosphate rock will make its way to South Asian customers via a long inland rail journey to Townsville port.

The first 25,000-tonne shipment departs for India at the end of September, expanding Australia’s phosphate export market, which currently supplies South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand.

Phosphate is a key nutrient for plant growth and development and is an essential ingredient in fertilisers. It is also a raw material vital to manufacturing.

Robert Mencel, managing director of Australian-based company Centrex, said the Indian deal would realise a long-held ambition for miners in the Georgina Basin, which spans Queensland to the Northern Territory and contains large amounts of phosphate in reserve.

“If you think about the Georgina Basin, it’s been known about now for probably a good 50 years or 60 years, and it’s a huge area, it’s got some really good phosphate deposits,” he said.

India a growing breadbasket

Pandemic lockdowns in India’s biggest cities and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s extension of a national food welfare program has reversed a decades-long employment decline in the agricultural industry, according to the International Labour Organization.

The world’s most populous country is largely reliant on imported phosphate, bringing in about 10 million tonnes a year to meet its fertiliser production needs.

That’s roughly 10 times the amount used by Australian and New Zealand markets.

Mr Mencel said phosphate rock from Australia offered the advantage of being naturally high-grade and low in cadmium, a heavy metal found in phosphate rock that is toxic to crop and human health.

“[India is] looking to diversify supply,” he said.

“A lot of their product does come from North Africa or via the Middle East, and I guess they’d like to know there is an alternative if things were to deteriorate there.”

Domestic opportunities

Despite the export potential for Australia’s budding phosphate miners, operating in remote north-west Queensland still involves high costs, transport limitations and energy infrastructure challenges.

Projects in the remote region will have to wait another eight years for connection to the National Electricity Market with the completion of CopperString 2.0 in 2032, which will connect the North West Minerals Province to the grid in Townsville via a 1,100-kilometre overhead transmission line.

In the meantime, the Queensland government has been attempting to accelerate commercial commitment to the region.

In July it announced a cash injection of nearly $6 million for North West Phosphate’s Paradise South operation, the largest phosphate resource holding in the country, while Incitec Pivot Fertilisers’ Phosphate Hill was awarded a $28 million regional development grant to develop its own renewable energy storage system.

Mr Mencel said north-west Queensland had a “bright future” of supplying high-grade product to domestic and global markets.