Back. It's a pleasure to host this next session with Nutrien. I got Ken Seitz up here next to me. He's the CEO. He's had a long career in ag and mining. He used to run the potash business for Nutrien. Years ago, he was the CEO of Canpotex, so clearly knows potash. Also up here is Jeff Tarsi. Jeff runs the retail business for Nutrien. I met Jeff about 20 years ago, back in the UAP days when he was at UAP. This is pre-acquisition by old Agrium, and he took me through a cotton field in Missouri, or as he referred to it, in the Bootheel. Jeff's got a long history in the retail business. He ran the retail business in North America, ran it in South America, and now is global leader of the retail business. Awesome to have you both.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
Maybe we'll start with you, Ken. You got a lot of momentum going in each of your various businesses. Give us a little bit of your high-level view on 2025. Where are you the most confident that you have growth?
Yeah. No, thanks for having us, Steve. Great to be here. And yes, we're entering the year here with some tailwinds. I think it kind of starts with the grower, and we can go really around the world, whether it's Southeast Asia and palm oil prices, whether it's a focus on food security that we're seeing a real step change in crop nutrient consumption in China, whether it's over to India where growing conditions are good. Certainly in Brazil last year, record fertilizer consumption. We expect that to grow again this year. Or here in North America, where corn prices to start the year have been strengthening up to $5 and saw some optimism, I would say, among farmers in this part of the world. And a global grain stocks-to-use ratio that continues to be really quite tight. We haven't seen it this tight really since 2012, 2013.
So it doesn't take much weather events and whatever else to tip that ratio, and we see that reflected in price. And indeed, with what the USDA has said about corn production here in this part of the world, we see that tightness now reflected in the corn price. So starting the year in terms of farmers and grower sentiment, we're feeling reasonably optimistic, I would say. For our business and what it is that we do, we're coming off a strong year in our downstream business, in our retail business, where last year we were able to grow proprietary products. We're continuing on with our network optimization work. We saw strong margins and crop protection. And entering this year, we did have some weather events in 2024, which we always do, which we saw the impact on fertilizer in North America.
We expect those volumes to return this year, weather cooperating, but that farmers will certainly look toward balanced fertilization to maximize yields. And that will carry on with our proprietary product growth. We'll carry on with optimizing our network and, importantly, continue to improve our business in Brazil. So that when we talk about earnings, our investor-day target of $1.9-$2.1 billion EBITDA of our retail business, our downstream business next year, we have some confidence in that one. And then behind that, of course, is our footprint of the largest fertilizer production on the planet. And we can go commodity to commodity. In potash, we see tightening because of the supply and demand fundamentals. We can certainly talk more about that, Steve, but nitrogen as well, urea, with Chinese export restrictions and strong seasonal demand. We've seen favorable pricing there.
And on ammonia, while we've seen some seasonal softening and some improved reliability, maybe in the Middle East and some potential new production this year out of the Gulf Coast, the fact is that European gas prices are still high, and we still have ammonia prices, albeit there's been some softening, but still above that $500 Tampa ammonia that we call mid-cycle pricing. And just looking at starting the spring planting season here in the U.S., some growers out as we speak and expected expanded corn acreage this year, which means good things for our business. So yeah, you put it all together, Steve, and I've been using the words over the last couple of days, we're cautiously optimistic.
In recent years, you've pulled back on some of your investments in growth. How do you think about it now? Is it more return to shareholders, or do you see opportunities for some growth investments?
It's just I kind of think of it as high-grading our portfolio of growth investments. And so you're absolutely right. We were looking at building a clean ammonia plant. And the economics of that thing at the end of the day, even with the 45Q tax credit, in the end, it didn't make sense for us. And so we walked away from that one. You're right, Steve, that we've deployed capital in Brazil, and that's been an incredibly challenged environment for us. And yet, even with the market continuing to be uncooperative, we have been making great strides in improving that business. And we have to, we're charting a path on what our exposure to Brazilian growth in agriculture looks like.
Yes, we're pulling back on some of these things, but we have, and we have pulled back growth CapEx by about half from about $1 billion to $400-$500 million. But that $400-$500 million is just really focused on high conviction growth opportunities. Whether it's automating our mining machines, which is improving productivity, definitely safety outcomes, whether it's the reliability, brownfield in debottlenecking investments we've made in our nitrogen complex, that's all contributing to, we talked about adding two to three million tons of fertilizer production to our portfolio last year at Investor Day and achieving that by 2026. We believe we're on track to do that. If you look at the volume growth from 2024- 2025, 2025- 2026, again, we certainly have line of sight to that one.
And then in our downstream business, flowing those crop nutrients through our footprint, but growing our proprietary business, or optimizing our network and the cost benefits we get from that, it's just to say that it's very targeted growth as well in our downstream business that's going to contribute to that $1.9-$2.1 billion EBITDA. So we do think about our business and get excited about it in terms of growth, but just extremely targeted and only focusing on what we're good at. And that is serving a farmer and producing fertilizers and flowing them through to that farmer.
I'm going to drill through each of their businesses, but if anybody wants to jump in with a question, just raise your hand. Let's talk about, in the downstream retail, the potential for more bolt-ons. The one that you guys made a few years back in Central Illinois, the Van Horn, I knew that business for a long time. My college roommate was loyal to that retailer, and their improvement, what they disclosed to me, their improvement in profitability post the acquisition was 2X. Talk about that potential to drive profitability through acquisitions.
Yeah, and first of all, that was a fabulous acquisition, a great business run by a good management team there. And we had our eyes on that one for quite a while. If you know of another one like that, I'm all ears right now because it sits in a really sweet spot for us as well in that Corn Belt. And Steve, I think when you look at what we can bring to that type of business, and the thing that jumps out at you to start with is that proprietary products business. And so businesses that size don't have the luxury of investing in a proprietary product business, especially across all three shifts, crop protection, seed, and the nutrient side of things. And so we were immediately able to bring that platform into that business.
And they were able to, because they had such good agronomy relations with their customers there, we brought a lot of value-added type products that we could expand out into their customer base. And when we do these tuck-ins or bolt-ons, these types of synergies come immediately. And that's what makes them so attractive to us. Also, Steve, I mean, if you look at the size that we are in the crop protection side of the business and the nutrient side of the business, and obviously that should come with some advantages as well in how we buy and what our terms are from that standpoint. And so we were able to add some of those synergies as well across each of those shelves that would have added to that side of the business.
I'll tell you also, we take a lot back across the rest of our network when we do those acquisitions as well. There are things that we learn out of those businesses. For instance, Van Horn was exceptional in upselling seed and seed with a lot of technology and such. And so there were things that we were able to integrate around our people in that same area that made them better on that seed shelf, which has been a goal of ours for some time, is increasing our share in that seed market. So a lot of things, a lot of things we learned out of the application side of the business as well from that standpoint of how do we run the equipment more efficient. So I always say this, and it doesn't matter where we do acquisitions, the learnings go both ways.
There are synergies that we're going to bring on day one, and there are things that we're going to pick up that when we pick those up, look how broad our network is that we can expand that across.
Your share in the U.S. on that retail channel, is it in the low 20s% somewhere? Where do you think you can get it with bolt-ons without touching the co-ops?
Yeah, that's been. I'd love to figure out a way to do something on the co-op side of things. We hadn't been able to do that, but we would like to think, I mean, that's our most attractive area for growth, Steve, and for a lot of different reasons. Number one, I've talked again about our proprietary business and how quickly we can integrate that in. The fact that we want to grow our seed business, and that's a major opportunity for us to grow seed as well. But I'd like to think that we could grow that business to a 30% market share. That doesn't mean I got a clear path for that. Ken would like for me to give him that path as well from that standpoint, but that'll come from several different factors. It'll continue to come from organic growth.
And that's our most nutritious growth we can have is growing organically. And then it's also going to come from the fact that as we see good opportunities pop up, whether it's a tuck-in or a bolt-on opportunity, particularly across that Corn Belt area, that we're going to be attracted to those opportunities.
With respect to the proprietary products across these three platforms, you got biologicals, you got your own Dyna-Gro seed brand, you got the Loveland crop chemical products. Which of those three pathways do you think you have the most growth potential?
Yeah, look, first of all, we love that biological space. We think we have the strongest platform of anyone out there in that space. And we've probably been in that business longer than most people anticipate that we have. And I'll give you a couple of examples of that. But if I look five years out on our proprietary platform, I would expect about 70% of our growth to come in from nutritionals and biostimulants, bio-nutritionals. So that's a big, Ken just talked just a bit ago about, we've been very clear that we want to grow our gross margins in the proprietary base to $1.4 billion by the end of 2026. And biologicals, the nutritionals are going to play a big, big part in that growth. But we've invested about $500 million in that space over the last 10 years. We're back integrated in that space.
Our vertical integration that we have by being back integrated in that allows us to really quickly bring innovation straight to the farm gate. We've got roughly 600,000 customers globally. That channel access, as you know, Steve, is absolutely essential. There are a lot of companies out there today in that biological space. There are not a lot of companies that have easy access into the channel and down to the farm gate. One of our earlier products in that market is a product called Titan. We put it down with dry fertilizer in the fall. I asked this question earlier this morning to one of our team members at Loveland, but this past year, we crossed 100 million acres of application with that product. That just gives you some idea that we didn't just enter this space in the last two or three years.
We've been in it roughly for the last 10 years or so. And we've got several new products that we've introduced into that marketplace, Terramar, and our Black Max C2 products is where we combine carbon and carbohydrates together, infuse them together. And these products all work to make nutrients more available to the plant and the root zone. They also work to reduce stress in the plant as well. And these are two relatively new products. And we probably crossed somewhere between 8-10 million application acres this past year with those products. And I know I've talked to you before. We'll be introducing Infinity this spring, a nitrogen efficiency product with three different modes of action that we're really excited about as well.
We think we can very quickly get it into our customer base because we're all about the products that we use, making them as efficient as possible and as readily available as possible to the plant.
This Infinity, this nitrogen fixing that you say had three modes of action, do you have any data on that with respect to either the yield benefits or any effect on the amount of nitrogen applied by that grower?
Yeah, we do. We would have put out last year just under 350 trials with that product, which is quite substantial, and we saw anywhere from a six to eight bushel per acre average yield increase, particularly with corn from that standpoint, Steve. And so we feel really good. And what was interesting about this, because I get the last couple of days, got a lot of questions as well. When you use these products, are they not eventually going to reduce the amount of NP and K used? And actually, the best results were this product when we used the standard rates of nitrogen with it. And again, because it's got more than one mode of action, it's fixing atmospheric nitrogen. It's recruiting nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and it's liberating nitrogen from existing organic pools.
I know that gets a little bit technical there, but that's kind of what's unique about the product. So we have a lot of confidence in bringing that in and introducing that product. We're really excited about it.
Excellent. Why don't we switch to potash? What's your outlook for supply and demand on potash? You got issues going on in Belarus. You got issues in Laos. Is demand growth going to continue at a pace that you think it tightens from here?
Yeah, so we ended 2024 with global shipments of about 72.5 million tons. And this year, Steve, we're saying 71-75 million tons. So at the midpoint, it's an increment of 500,000 tons of demand growth. And where's that coming from? Mostly from Brazil in Southeast Asia. And again, we saw record consumption in Brazil last year, and that continues to grow. And we saw a step up in consumption in Southeast Asia last year. And we expect that just given where palm oil prices are again, that it's just highly affordable for the plantations in Southeast Asia. So we're expecting demand growth there. If we look at the way potash has been growing for the last 20 years, it's kind of this 2.5% average annual growth rates that we talk about. And yes, we expect that to carry on going forward.
And it's everything we talk about from growing population, decreasing rate of arable land expansion, need 50% more food production by 2050, 10 billion people, 800 million food-insecure people on the planet today, on demand for higher calories. And so that today, the only solution really is balanced fertilization to improve yields. And so again, that gives us confidence around this 2.5% average annual growth rates. So 71-75 million tons this year. And as you say, Steve, there's been some supply side challenges and also some announced planned maintenance at some key producing regions. And so the Laotian production, which has been expanding and really some investment from China as domestic production in China has been declining, and they're on a depletion curve for their production in China. They've been, for the most part, looking to replace that with investments in Laos.
But we've talked about the Laotian production being from a geology perspective. It's challenged. It's water-laden deposits that make production difficult. And indeed, there's been some sinkholes now reported. I'm sure we've all seen those pictures where it's really substantive ground failures. And so that does have an impact on production. And we'll see how material that is, but it could be material this year. Add to that, the Belarusians announcing planned maintenance and saying that production would be impacted by a million tons. And then the Russians, Uralkali saying a similar thing that yes, we're in an environment now where we've with low channel inventories or average channel inventories. And just about every region we go to, China inventory is very tight. India, sort of average channel inventories. Brazil today, tight inventory situation. North America getting ready for the planting season.
We are seeing that tightness reflected in price now. So we've seen the Brazilian price come up from about $10 a month over the last several months. And frankly, we expect that to continue. Chinese domestic price, Argus just reported a couple of days ago, is at $400 a ton. That's up $55. We've increased our price here in North America and the U.S. by $45 a short ton. So that tightness is being felt. We see that being reflected in prices. And if we look again at the supply demand balance for this year and maybe even in the next, that we expect that tightness to continue.
Do you have a view on how Canpotex might approach contracts with China this year and India?
Yeah. It's a similar probably discussion that you and I have had in the past, Steve, that is just looking at those channel inventories and when it is that either China or India might be compelled to come to the market, especially in a price where, sorry, an environment where prices are firming. Could it be that China and India are compelled to step into the market sooner rather than later? And I will say that our observation is that inventories in China are very tight at the moment, and prices are firming globally. And so, yeah, like I say, could it be that the Chinese step in and start having those discussions sooner rather than later? I think it could. The role that Canpotex plays in all that is always a question, how the buying committee approaches the big suppliers and starts to negotiate.
So without getting into a bunch of confidential negotiations details, it's more about the fact that prices are firming. We absolutely expect that there be maybe even a material improvement over the contract price of last year as channel inventories are tight and as prices firm globally.
If you were still running Canpotex, would you hold off on those negotiations and let it get tighter?
That's a great question. I think the short answer for us is yes. And part of the reason is that we've reduced our dependence on China. And so if we look at the way we've been planning, we can achieve our planned volumes here in 2025 without feeling beholden to rushing into a contract with China.
The 500,000-ton increase is not 2.5%. Are you being conservative or is there?
You know, that's a great question. And certainly, if you look over the last 20 years, it definitely doesn't happen in a straight line. It's up and down depending on what's going on in any agricultural region on the planet, what's going on with weather and all those things. And so we talk about 2.5% as though it's a straight line. The way we think about it is we are returning to trend-level demand post all of this volatility that we experienced associated with that conflict in Eastern Europe. And as we return to trend-level demand, while it's not in a straight line, if you look at it over a 30-year period and you step far back enough from the volatility, you do see a straight line. That's where by the end of the decade, we talk about 80 to 85 million tons of demand and some confidence around that.
What about the impact of tariffs?
Yeah. For Nutrien and for our business, it really is a discussion about potash once again, and I have been, I keep saying, I've been camped out in Washington for the month of January and similarly in Ottawa and just talking about the importance of Canadian potash imports into the U.S. The reality is that the last few years, over 85% of the U.S. farmers' potash needs have been met by Canadian production, and certainly, we feel that right through our channel. 30% of what we send into the U.S. goes through our own channel. We love that, and we love getting our product onto U.S. farmer customers' farms, and so just explaining again the relevance and importance of that to food security here in the U.S., it's a meaningful thing.
As we look at our business and what we've been doing for the planting season here, as usual, we're filling our channel, getting ready for weather cooperating a big season here where growers are looking at some of the best seed traits that we have on our shelves and expanded corn acreage, planting corn, and doing everything they can to give them the best shot at maximizing yields, which includes obviously balanced fertilization, getting those volumes on the ground, and so we're wanting to serve that US farmer in the way that we always have. Those are our customers, and so we want those customers to be happy and be making money and be kept whole. At the same time, we have this threat of tariffs.
And we do expect that if tariffs are imposed, that we'll get through this planting season, like I say, with our grower customers being kept whole and enjoying tariff-free volumes. The question is, if tariffs are imposed, what happens after that? And what we've said is we expect we'll be passing those costs along. And whether it's distribution, and our distribution customers in the U.S. are passing them along through our downstream channels. And you look at the cost curve, it would be very difficult for any producer to absorb that at the moment. And so again, hopeful that we can avoid all this, but as we head into the latter half of the year, we'll have to see what those impacts in this part of the world look like.
And maybe one more on potash. The Jansen mine, is that when do you expect that to start? And do you see that as being an issue or do you see that as in line with incremental demand?
Yeah. So we don't have any great insight into how Lanigan is, or sorry, how Jansen is progressing, other than our Lanigan mine is right next door. And so we can look over at the mine shaft and the mills that are being constructed. So what BHP has talked about is first production in 2026 and then ramping up from there. We've done our own, looked through our own lens on that because we've built mines and we've ramped up mines and we have those experiences. And so as we've looked through our lens on it, we say phase one volumes that they've talked about coming on kind of end of the decade. And just exactly as we were talking about, Steve, in terms of demand growth for potash on the planet, we get to that timeframe, yeah, we're in an 80-85 million ton market.
Jansen's kind of 5% of the market at that time. So it's not that it's nothing, it's certainly something. But we absolutely anticipate that we'll, if you look at where volumes can expand on the planet, we would have the most competitive incremental volume. We definitely believe that. So we'll be expanding our volumes along with that demand growth and maintaining our market share. It's been historically kind of 19.5%-20% in that range. And so by the end of the decade, we expect that we'll be producing 16 million tons of potash. And again, that would be among the lowest cost production on the planet. So yeah, we're watching Jansen closely, but we expect that we'll be in a market that will absorb those tons.
Okay. Switching to nitrogen, you talked about potash inventories in your view are relatively tight in many regions. How would you assess the inventory levels in key channel regions in the world for nitrogen?
Yeah. You know, we've seen to start the year, we've seen some tightening in urea prices. Now urea at or above what we call mid-cycle pricing. So that's kind of $400 or better. And that's related to some strong seasonal demand here at the moment. But I think importantly, everyone looking at what the Chinese are going to do with export restrictions, which they've been substantial. And again, you look at what China is focused on in terms of food security, and we've seen this step change in potash consumption in China, 18-19 million tons, where just a few years ago it was kind of 14, 15, 16. So it's been a real meaningful step change. And we see that in export restrictions on urea and phosphates as well. So we've started the year with urea prices being quite strong. Ammonia, there's a number, as usual.
And as you know, Steve, there's a number of moving parts there. We've seen some softening to start the year, albeit off some very strong prices to close the year, Tampa ammonia. And so today, sitting again above what we call mid-cycle pricing, so above $500 Tampa ammonia. But look at the supply and demand fundamentals over the course of this year. We do have improved reliability in places like the Middle East and some new volume coming out of the Gulf Coast. I think the important things to watch in urea, or sorry, in ammonia, are European gas prices, where we continue to have 20% of European production shut in, and maybe permanently, actually, that 20%. But even for the remaining plants, $16 per MMBtu TTF pricing translates to about a $600 a ton Tampa ammonia in order to make a go of it.
And so that delta between where we produce here in North America and a $4 gas versus what it costs in Europe, and that still exists, it's still substantive. And so I think that that's one to watch. But again, sitting today, we're encouraged by where we see ammonia pricing.
Anybody want to jump in with a question? Sharon, we got one up here.
Thank you. I want to go back a little bit on potash and ask two things. Number one is, so in China, as you said, I know they have many benchmarks, but price are actually $400. Your contract is under $300. So with the contract expiration, what's kind of the price you are getting selling to China? Is it more like on the spot basis, or do you still have to sell based on the prior contract prices? And the second question is on India. It's remarkable how little potash they're buying. And you talked about the need for balanced fertilizer applications, and definitely they don't have that. So do you have any thoughts on what needs to change there? And if something would change in the years ahead and they would buy materially more potash?
Yeah. So with respect to the first question, it's actually the way the Chinese approach the market is actually fairly complex. So there's three members of the Chinese Buying Committee, and those companies are the only companies that can issue import license for potash. And those are the only companies that can access the so-called strategic reserve of 2.5 million tons that sits at the port. So there's some flexibility that the members of the Buying Committee have that no other regional provincial buyers in China have. And those three companies work very closely with the Ministry of Commerce and China's MOFCOM to assess when the contract will expire and when a new contract will be introduced. And people call it an annual contract. In fact, it's not.
MOFCOM is always watching, as we were just talking about earlier, Steve, always watching those channel volumes, always concerned about domestic food security in China, always wanting to ensure that the Chinese farmer gets competitive fertilizers and that they step into the market to negotiate at an opportune time given the trajectory of price. So there's a number of moving parts there. In the meantime, they're watching rail volumes coming in from Russia, but now Belarus from the north. They're watching their domestic production deplete. They're watching what's happening in Laos, and they're watching seaborne imports, which is, it's just for seaborne imports where that annual contract is settled. So-called annual contract is settled. It's never annual. Until such time as there's a new contract, it is the old contract price. But the MOFCOM will even say to the members of the Buying Committee, no new import licenses.
We're going to stop, we're looking at the channel, we're going to stop importing. The idea is to put pressure on the suppliers then to lower prices and come to the table and negotiate. So as it stands today, we're still under the old contract. MOFCOM has not said no new export licenses, import licenses into China. But as it stands today, again, they may say, okay, that last contract is up because we need the volumes and suppliers aren't sending them there, just given how low the price is, and step into the market for a new contract. So there's so many moving parts, but it's not as simple as old contract expires, new contract negotiated, new volume. There's so many moving parts there, and the Chinese really exploit all those moving parts to try and get the best potash price on the planet.
As it relates to India, the big interference or noise in Indian potash demand is the subsidy, is the Indian government subsidy to the farmer. And that subsidy typically favors nitrogen, almost always favors nitrogen. And there's a big footprint of domestic nitrogen production in India with a strong lobby and all those things which end up influencing the subsidy in favor of nitrogen volume. So the Indian farmer habitually over-applies nitrogen and under-applies potash. If you look at agronomically what Indian farmers should be putting down, I mean, this year we have them getting to about four million tons of potash. Agronomically, it should be at least double that amount. But again, the subsidy interferes with that. We have seen over time improvements in potash consumption slowly.
Part of that is running test plots in India and market development just to show the Indian farmer that the difference between using potash or not, the difference between test plots in India and test plots in a place like Heilongjiang Province in China is that you have like 100 million farmers in India, right? So getting to each of these farmers to demonstrate the benefits of balanced fertilization is much more challenged in India. Yet over time, these things are just best for the pocketbook of the grower in India. Over time, we expect that potash demand will continue to grow in India just because agronomically, economically for the farmer, it makes sense to do so, even with the noise that you hear from the subsidy.
Back here, Sharon.
Can you please share your thoughts on how to think about the impact of any potential Russia-Ukraine peace deal on both nitrogen market as well as maybe potash as well? Thank you.
Yeah. That's obviously a question that we've gotten over the last several weeks, and so we'll see. There's a number of ifs there, I guess, if there is peace, and then for the Russian production, I think a couple of impacts. First of all, on potash, that Russian production was never sanctioned, and so from a potash perspective, we've seen all of those volumes and then some actually come back. They're in the market today, so for the Russian situation, no impact on potash as we see it. Perhaps a bit different for nitrogen, just given that discussion about nitrogen pricing in Europe, and so would it be the case that if we have some, if we have peace in Eastern Europe, that the Europeans can start enjoying lower cost natural gas?
I guess that remains to be seen because obviously there's been investments in replacement energy to wean off the Russian gas, but nevertheless, could we see an improvement there? Perhaps. I mean, again, the reality is, I think that that 20% of European production that's been shut in and most of it likely to be shut in permanently, it's just a question then about how competitive the balance of those plants that are operating are in a reduced natural gas price environment. There's a lot of ifs there. I think the bigger one to watch on the ammonia side is probably the repair of that damaged ammonia pipeline that goes through Ukraine. And could that liberate some Russian production? That's probably one to watch. The last one is Belarus and the potash production out of Belarus. Sanctions in Belarus, sorry, potash production in Belarus are sanctioned. Those mines are sanctioned.
Those sanctions existed prior to the war in Ukraine. If those sanctions are lifted, could we see there's about a million tons that are still shut into Belarus just because access to end markets from a cost to serve perspective is prohibitive? You even see that into China. You're probably like getting $285-$300 a ton for the Belarusians on a delivered basis into China. In other words, current contract price is losing money. So a million tons still challenged in Belarus. I think the question there is, if sanctions are lifted, would the Belarusians be able to get access to tidewater back through Lithuania, which is right there, 600 km away and affordable for the Belarusian production? I don't know. I think we know that those port assets in Klaipėda and in Lithuania have been repurposed. They're not just sitting idle. So there's stuff flowing through those assets.
And we think that the Lithuanians could be challenged to invite the Belarusians back. Sanctions or no sanctions. And so would it be the case that the Belarusians need to continue to look to the west coast of Russia to get volumes to tidewater Murmansk and the costs associated with that? We think that that could be the case. Maybe these volumes over time come back into the market, but frankly, that's always been our assumption that eventually these Belarusian volumes get back into the market. It just could take some time.
With that, we're out of time. Please join me in thanking the Nutrien team.