Incitec Pivot has deployed a ‘reliability taskforce’ at its Phosphate Hill site after manufacturing interruptions there cost the company $47 million in a year.

The north-west Queensland operation suffered a number of unplanned outages during the year to September 30, the company’s annual financial report shows.

This included an incident within the ammonia plant’s pressure swing adsorption unit in September, causing the company to bring forward a program of planned maintenance work.

Incitec Pivot said the fertiliser plant was expected to return to full production rates at the end of November.

The Phosphate Hill plant produced 17 per cent more ammonium phosphates in the year ended September 30 at 864,400 tonnes compared to the previous year. This was due to the planned maintenance turnaround project last year.

Incitec Pivot – which includes Dyno Nobel as well as Fertilisers Asia Pacific – reported Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) of $880 million for the year ended September 30.

This was down from a record FY22 performance of $1.485 billion, which benefited from a very strong commodity price environment.

Across the organisation, interim chief executive officer Paul Victor said Incitec Pivot Fertilisers’ strong brands and unrivalled distribution network helped increase domestic fertiliser sales by 9 per cent.

“However, overall earnings were impacted by a challenging market and disappointing manufacturing performance at Phosphate Hill,” he said.

“In response, we have deployed a reliability taskforce at Phosphate Hill to address and implement key actions.”

Mr Victor said the team at Phosphate Hill was working tirelessly to stabilise the plant’s operations and ensure performance in the long run, and he thanked them for their commitment.

Gas supply continued to be an issue for Phosphate Hill for the year ending on September 30.

Gas supply disruptions increased FY23 gas costs by $79 million (which is at the lower end of the previously announced range).

IPL expects that shortfall gas will be required in FY24, with the cost expected to be about $45 million lower than the cost in FY23.

The company has proposed structural separation of its fertiliser business and in July confirmed it had received a number of approaches for the potential acquisition of that business.

IPL said today that those discussions were progressing.