I have the pleasure of hosting this next session with Phil Brown from ICL. He's President of Phosphate Specialties Solutions. So it's a pleasure to have you, Phil.
Thank you.
Twenty years with ICL has had a lot of different roles within the phosphate business. Previously was with Celanese and Monsanto at one point. So, glad to have you, Phil.
Thank you.
Perhaps we can start this off by a little bit of an overview from you on this phosphate specialties business. You're not DAP and MAP exclusively.
Definitely, definitely not.
So, you get into a lot of different products, and I wanna really understand, you know, what enables you to get into these products. But, give us a little bit of an overview.
Perfect. I think that's a great place to start to explain our phosphate business because we're probably not a phosphate business like many people might be thinking about. We start in a very similar way, right? We're a back-integrated phosphate producer that mines phosphate rock in a couple of different places around the world. And the beginning of our value chain is the same where we produce, you know, merchant-grade acid and phosphate fertilizers. But then we have a very extensive downstream specialties business that we build off of that, where we take the next step in the value chain, purified phosphoric acid, not merchant-grade phosphoric acid. We sell a lot of that into a lot of different applications into food and industrial.
But then we take that as a building block to build an entire portfolio of what we call phosphate salts, where we combine that phosphoric acid with many different anions: calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron, you name it, right? We build this entire portfolio of functional ingredients that have a function in an application. And then we even go further downstream from that, and we take those single ingredients. So we sell those as products, but then we also create solutions with those for customers as well. We'll take those single ingredients, combine them with other ingredients, and we'll make an entire solution for a particular customer. So that's the entire value chain that we operate in.
You know, a little bit of background from a business strategy standpoint we have been on and will continue to be on to move as many metric tons of our upstream phosphate downstream as possible. So we see much better opportunity and value for our business, in bringing those metric tons further and further downstream. So if you take that today, that phosphate business for ICL is about $2.2 billion in revenue in 2024. About 60% of that was in the downstream specialty side of it, and only about 40% of it in the upstream commodities, side of things. So I think that's a great place to start to talk about that downstream specialties value chain, which is where our strategy lies.
Not only that we see it as a more valuable or value-add market than the upstream commodity side of things, but we also see some opportunities in there for some pretty high growth areas, so we've got the conventional, let's say, base part, so if we talk about food, you know, going into food, about 40% of that downstream business I talked about is going into food and food applications, and then the other into industrial, but we see some good growth opportunities in the food market and also particularly in some of the areas like battery materials, as well on the phosphate side.
Okay. All right. The phosphate that you're mining, is it of a high P2O5 content? What enables you to even have this 60% downstream opportunity? What, first of all, where is it mined and what's the quality compared to your competitors?
Sure. So, to start that, we mine two places predominantly in the world. So we mine in Israel and in the Negev Desert, where we have a very rich deposit of phosphate. And then we mine in China as well. So we also, you know, we are the only phosphate specialty company that produces all around the world. So we have the same analogous footprint that we're doing our specialties business in China, in North America, in South America, in Europe, as well. When you talk about the rock, let's say, where you start with, it's not necessarily the P2O5 content. That's important. That helps the cost curve, right, to start with the higher P2O5 content rock.
But really whether you take that rock and take it further downstream into specialties really has to do with the impurities that are in that rock. So the higher the impurity levels in the rock, the more costly it's gonna be. So let's say as an engineer, I would tell you all rock could be made into downstream products. They all have a completely different cost curve, right, depending on what contaminant level or contaminants I need to take out of that rock. So all the rock that we do mine is very capable and suitable for taking into downstream applications.
And so that, you know, that first step is that, as I said, purification process where you start to remove things like heavy metals and organics and other things to prepare it to be either a good suitable organic raw material or a industrial raw material or food raw material.
Some of the phosphate ore deposits that I'm familiar with have either cadmium in them or.
Uranium.
Uranium.
High levels of organics, other things like that.
Is your Israeli deposit or the one in China of fewer or less impurities?
Yes. Yeah. So as I said, they're both suitable for that, both China and Israel, both very suitable for that. When you look at our business, so not only do we do the front-end mining and rock processing and MGA production there, we do the purification to those next level products, WPA, but we also do that in other places in the world. So we take our MGA as where MGA would be moving around the world, and we take our high-quality MGA and we'll move it to other places where we'll actually do additional purification. So not only are we doing it in those two predominant locations, but we're converting that MGA to purified acid in other places as well around the world.
Okay. Interesting. How long has ICL had this mine in China?
We've had the mine in China, gosh, a little about eight years. So we went into a joint venture with a company called YYTH in China. My business, the phosphate business, has had a longstanding relationship with them. We'd gone into actually a specialty phosphate joint venture just to produce salt, that middle part of our value chain, 25 years ago. And then we grew that relationship about seven years ago to extend that to rock. So before they were just providing some basic raw materials to us, we were partners in the production of salts. And then we went and fully integrated back into rock. And so when we did that initial joint venture, the assets that came with that from a rock and MGA processing were really targeted towards the commodity market.
And so what ICL did over that period of time is we went in and we converted that business from a commodity business to a specialty business. So we built out additional WPA capacity. We built out additional downstream salts capacity, whether that be for specialty applications in food or industrial, but also in specialty agriculture like MKP and soluble MAP, and products like that. So we really converted that from a commodity asset over that period of time to really mainly just like our Israeli assets focused on the downstream specialties markets.
This 40/60 split between commodity and your specialty, has that changed over time?
It has. It's so that's been, as I said, the strategy for the last 10 years. I've been in ICL 20. The last 10 years has been to move more and more of those metric tons downstream, and it continues in that direction. So, you know, if I achieve my ultimate strategy, we won't sell any of our metric tons of phosphate into the commodity markets. We'll absorb 'em in all of our downstream.
Like 10 years ago, what would've been that split?
That split would've been probably closer to 60/40 the other direction.
All right. Let's drill into those downstream. Maybe we take one at a time. You mentioned out of that 60%, did I hear right? 40% food, 60% industrial.
Mm-hmm.
What are the food applications that you're selling this phosphate into?
Yeah, it's not just phosphate. It's salts and solutions. So that whole value chain, as I said, starts from phosphoric acid going into food. So we predominantly go to market in five different key market segments in food. So we have a market segment called MPS, meat, poultry, and seafood. We have a market segment for bakery. We have a market segment for dairy. We have a market segment for beverage. And then we have what we call alternative protein. And probably worth explaining alternative protein a little bit deeper as well because we're not producing protein. So we'll build on it with the other, others. So bakery's a big market for it. What is specialty phosphate used for in bakery? Well, probably anybody that bakes has used baking powder. Commercial baking powder are specialty phosphates.
So you have two ways to leaven something, either biologically with yeast or chemically with baking powder. Baking powder is predominantly phosphate, and so depending on what type of a baking powder a customer wants, fast reacting, slow reacting, particular characteristics will vary the anion. Maybe it's calcium, maybe it's sodium, and then we'll also change the characteristics, the chemistry. We actually polymerize these phosphate molecules to change reactivity of them from short chain to long chain, to change those and add additives, so if a baking customer wants a baking powder that reacts with a particular profile over time, right? If I'm a big commercial baking company, I'm probably not using yeast because my plant shuts down for four or five hours. All my yeast is dead, right?
But they may need a chemical or a leavening process that is matched to their plant process, as well. And so we do that on a custom basis in bakery. You know, talking about meat, the simplest thing to talk about in meat, you hear about brining meat, right? If anybody's probably ever barbecued or cooked things, brining solutions aren't predominantly salt. They're predominantly phosphate. So any meat that especially is gonna be frozen or go through a freeze-thaw cycle will generally be treated with phosphate, overall. Dairy and the dairy side of things, what we're doing in phosphates and phosphates, these salts are all functional ingredients. They have a function, as I mentioned before. So in dairy, we're helping to control the melt point of cheese. So if you're gonna melt cheese or to emulsify, right?
In cheese, when you make cheese, you have an aqueous component and you have an oil component. And you need the two of those to work together with one another. And phosphates help do that in an emulsification application there. And so that alternative protein section, that we really see as a high growth area of food right now, around vegetable protein is really taking our knowledge base and our application base of managing and manipulating plant-based protein or meat-based proteins and dairy-based proteins and extending that to plant-based protein, right? So if I'm now making milk out of soy or oat or whatever instead of cow milk, I still need to manage those proteins in the application. I still need to emulsify 'em. I still need to stabilize 'em. I still need to do the same functional things to 'em.
It's different, but our knowledge and expertise in those areas lends us very well to helping support the growth of plant-based proteins, whether they're going into beverages or meat or meat analogs and those types of things as well.
What about beverages? What, what is the application?
Beverage. So it's a broad spectrum, but the easiest thing, the simplest thing to talk about beverage, which will also help maybe transition into the industrial side is sequestration, right? So if anybody drinks a sports drink, name your particular sports drink you drink, Powerade, Gatorade, whatever, they're selling you hard water, but you want a nice pretty product, right? Hard water's usually a bad thing when you think about it in a glass and the mud settling out to the bottom of it. And then, yeah, and when you buy one of these sports drinks, you don't wanna have to shake it up and put all that stuff, you know, into a slurry to drink it. You want it to be in a nice crystal clean, clear solution before I drink it.
And so phosphate is a sequestering agent that grabs those ions and holds 'em into solution, for that application. So if we transfer that over to the industrial side for the same application, if I'm in an industrial water treatment segment, right, and I don't want fouling of my boiler or my water system and scale falling out from cycling up water, same thing. I need to sequester those calcium ions and other things in there to prevent that activity. So the basis of our product is on functionality. And many times the functionality in food and in an industrial application can be the same. So you can sell the same product or use the same product across those different portfolios. So it makes for a very diverse set of end applications that we sell our specialty phosphates into.
Presumably that your pricing power in food is a lot higher. You'd have to meet some much more rigorous, you know, trace level requirements for this to go into baking powder.
Yeah. Across that full spectrum, I think you can do that. And that's how you should really think about our phosphate specialties business. So the front end of it, maybe the first part of it, that purified phosphoric acid, the closest to a commodity, product in there on price and spec, it's more attached to what's going on in MGA and other things. It's a little bit more transparent of input costs and those types of things. But as you go further downstream to those salts and especially those solutions, the value proposition changes. And a customer could be interested in some of the same things, but they could be interested in something very different.
And then especially as we get to that solution where we're taking that product and maybe combining it with other functional ingredients to provide a solution for the customer, at that point, the value proposition changes from really an input cost and asset-based cost position to value I create through application and R&D for their particular food application, from there. And so across that whole value chain, you know, how we price and go to market is very different depending on the end market application that we're selling into. So some of it might sell a bit more on the price and spec side on quarterly or annual contracts. Some of it may be on multi-year agreements, right?
If I'm a big consumer goods company and I'm really worried about my brand recognition and everything else related to my product, I'm extremely concerned about reliability of supply and quality of supply that I'm getting from my producer, maybe not the last penny in price, and so you can have a very different value proposition depending on that customer and their application.
Out of all of these businesses that you've highlighted, what would you say is the fastest growing?
I think as we look forward after 20 years in phosphate, I see the largest growth opportunity for specialty downstream phosphate right now in battery materials, most definitely, right? If you look at, you know, seven or eight years ago when I got involved with lithium iron phosphate specifically as a cathode material, it wasn't clear seven years ago that it was gonna be a winning technology compared to NMC and other, other cathode materials. China made it so, right? They really saw the value in it. You know, it's lower cost. The materials are much more readily available. It's much safer. They had more of it themselves, from that standpoint, and so they put a lot into it, and really LFP now is a winning technology for battery materials for the cathode side, of materials.
And so for me, you know, unless I go back and this wasn't in my time, I saw the end of what happened with it. But if you go back to the fifties and sixties, there was a huge growth curve in specialty phosphate, predominantly into laundry detergent and into your automatic dishwasher at home. And then there was a reformulation of that and a big consolidation of the industry in the mid-nineties time period. Post that, this is the largest growth opportunity I see for specialty phosphates outside of, you know, the going back to the fifties and sixties when that was really taking off, in those applications as well.
So your sales into the LFP cathode in market, is that primarily outta your facility in China?
Today it is. So historically, as I said, we looked at it seven years ago. We didn't jump into LFP manufacturing in China seven years ago. We stayed very close to what was going on. We've been a big producer and provider of the raw materials, the phosphate raw materials going into that. It actually is how the, it is the basis of our second LFP project for Europe, is that main partner we've had in supplying, in China for the last seven years, from that standpoint. So that's where the majority of it has been so far. Now, from a strategy standpoint, we see great upside in not only our specialty phosphate business continuing to provide raw materials into the growth of that market in China and outside China, but a good opportunity and great opportunity for ICL to actually move into LFP manufacturing itself.
And a lot of people may ask the question, what the heck does ICL have to do with going and making a battery? First and foremost, we're not making batteries. We're not making a cell. We're making a phosphate salt. I just talked about we make an entire portfolio of phosphate salt. It's been the history of what we do in specialty phosphates today. Lithium iron phosphate is just another phosphate salt. Instead of putting sodium in or potassium in or calcium in, we're putting iron and lithium in, in that combination reaction with phosphoric acid. We already make iron phosphate today. The processes are the same. The unit operations, if you get into a technical nature, are very similar to one another, in how you produce LFP. There's some nuances to it.
So when you look at growth outside China now, we think we're very well positioned because we have large phosphate assets around the world. And the only phosphate company in the specialty phosphate arena that has large assets around the world in all those geographies to grow regional supply chains. So we have plants that have infrastructure that run large phosphate processes. We have the raw materials. 80% of LFP is the phosphate part of the molecule. We have those raw materials in our sites. We have the infrastructure. We have the presence in those markets to be a real driver there. What we didn't have, right, is while we're phosphate experts, we haven't been experts in the application of LFP and the use of it in a battery cell, right? We might know how to do the manufacturing process, but the application process is a bit different.
And so that's where on both of our projects, both in the U.S. and in Europe now, we've chosen partners to help us with those parts of the project. So in the U.S., that was with a Taiwanese company, LFP R&D company, cathode, R&D company called Aleees out of Taiwan. And in China, because of our relationship, we developed with Dynanonic, who is the number two LFP producer in China, over the last seven years where we've been supplying them raw materials, and really making tailored, raw materials for their LFP production. We jointly came to the agreement to expand and to approach the European market together. So they bring the technology side of things, the customer side of things, the application side of things. We bring the site, our raw materials, our infrastructure to the equation.
What is it that you need to get into LFP? Do you need a really high purity phosphoric acid? Is that what you use and then you make iron phosphate?
So there's multiple routes you can go to make LFP. So one, yes, you need a relatively good purity phosphoric acid or phosphate salt to do it. Some people start from a phosphate salt. Some people start from phosphoric acid. So you could start from a process that produces an iron phosphate, and then you could take that iron phosphate and react it with lithium. You can go into LFP. You can also go directly from phosphoric acid, iron, and lithium as well. So our US plant and process is based on a process that uses directly phosphoric acid, iron, and lithium. We don't pass through the iron phosphate portion. We do, let's say in a chemistry world, we make what we call ortho liquid iron phosphate, right? It's iron phosphate chemistry wise, but it's in a liquid solution.
We don't dry it into an anhydrous product like they do in China today if they're gonna make it via iron phosphate and then put it back in solution again just to react it. It's really an unnecessary step.
Where are your phosphate assets in the U.S.?
So our phosphate assets in the U.S. are in St. Louis, Missouri, which is where ICL's North American headquarters is located, and also in Lawrence, Kansas, about four hours west of there, and so our commercial plant in the U.S. is based in St. Louis, Missouri. We've already built a really a one-of-a-kind Western World pilot plant, which is, I would call a medium scale, so well above lab scale, we produce in our pilot plant about one metric ton a day of LFP that has allowed us to advance qualification work, right? Since there isn't been production in the U.S., with customers, because that is a lengthy qualification process, from end to end to try to accelerate that process and be able to work very collaboratively with customers. We built a pilot plant that's up and operational in St. Louis right now.
And then the commercial plant, we are in the final stages. If you're in the engineering world of FEL 3, we're in FEL 3 final detail design engineering. We've started some of the site prep work. And the biggest, you know, you talked about what do you need to do these things? The biggest part when you look at the development of those regional supply chains is the demand has to be there, right? So for me to produce LFP and sell LFP, there has to be a local cell manufacturing plant, that's gonna consume that.
And so all of our efforts in that North American project are targeted at making sure we're timing ourselves in those discussions with those customers as we qualify them and uniquely or very clearly understanding their timing of when their cell manufacturing is gonna come online, because we don't wanna be early and we don't wanna be late from that standpoint. When you're making, these are relatively capital-intensive investments, you don't wanna build it and they will come model. So these are all based very specifically on customer demand and commitment.
So when do you think you might reach FID on that project? And is this out in Kansas?
It's in St. Louis, Missouri.
So both the pilot and the.
Yep, the pilot and the, but they're in different locations in St. Louis. The pilot was inside existing facility. We went adjacent to some additional property for the larger commercial plant just from a cost and space requirement and to have expansion room for the future, as well there. You know, as we look at that and where we're at in that qualification process with customers, you know, not to get too far in the details, but, you know, they go through a multi-step where they make a small, what we call a coin cell or half cell. They test that. If that's okay, you have an MOU, we have a discussion, you set to the next step of doing what we would call maybe a large scale prismatic cell or something that good. Then you're progressing further through LOI and then structural agreement.
We're in that process right now. You know, our expectation is, you know, we don't control that cadence, on that side with them, but the expectation is an FID decision is probably somewhere in 2025 towards the end of the year for the US project.
Okay. And then where are you at on your project in China on LFP?
in Europe. So it, it's in Europe, it's in Spain, with a Chinese partner. So a little bit different, although the timing to market may end up being similar. The thing that our partner helps us with a lot is they bring already qualified customers to the equation and the partnership with us that can qualify based on their process and their product that's made in China because it will be a replication in Spain. So some of that process can be shortcutted on the qualification process, by using their China assets, their know-how, their capability, and their relationship with their customers there already.
So, similarly, even though we're, let's say, starting later, you know, the US project's been ongoing now for a year and a half or so where we're just announced the joint venture, in January of this year, we believe we can also be at an FID decision on Spain this year as well in 2025.
In China, are you supplying phosphoric acid to somebody else that's making the LFP?
We do. So we supply to Dynanonic, our partner in this, but we also supply other LFP producers in China as well.
That's where you're the furthest along, where you.
Yeah.
But you're not making the LFP.
We're not downstream. You're making, we're providing raw materials.
You're making the phosphoric acid for it.
And in some cases, salt. So some people, as you mentioned, start from.
Okay.
An iron phosphate process, not to get too deep into chemistry. So, but depending on the iron process or the iron source you start with, you may have a different need in the phosphate. So if you use a relatively pure iron source, you might start from phosphoric acid. If you start from a dirtier, like a byproduct stream, like iron sulfate that's coming from the TiO2 processing, which a lot of people do in China, then you've gotta remove sulfate and other things from that. And many of the times they will actually purchase MAP monoammonium phosphate, not what we think about on the fertilizer side, but soluble high purity monoammonium phosphate that's been made from high purity purified acid because they need the ammonia to precipitate the sulfate, that they take it out in the cleaning process for the iron.
So it can have. It's all a phosphate starting source, but sometimes they vary that depending on what process they're using and what the raw material source is, particularly on the iron side.
The phosphoric acid that goes into St. Louis, where are you producing that in Israel?
We do some of it in Israel, and we also have other strategic agreements with North American producers, as well.
Okay. Anyone wanna jump in here with a question?
Yeah, hi Phil, thanks for the presentation. I wanted to ask for your views, perhaps on the bromine market. I understand you're somewhat of a leader in bromine and fire retardant materials, et cetera. Perhaps could you give us a view on pricing and any other comments in that space?
Sure. Yeah. Bromine's not my business overall, but as I said, been in ICL a long time and exposed to all the different parts of ICL. So, you know, bromine, I think people have been following the story of bromine where some additional capacity came into the market and really changed the supply demand balance around bromine in the last couple of years. You know, we've seen some changes there where a lot of that capacity that came in. It's not gone away from the market. We've seen, let's say maybe only a small portion of it actually come back out of the market. But what we're seeing is the market behaving a little bit more like it should be in an oversupplied supply demand dynamic, which is, you know, especially for other producers.
ICL is fortunate that we have one of the lowest cost positions in the world because of the Dead Sea around bromine and one of the richest resources, and so they're not going to capture large market share in the market today, especially if they don't have the lowest cost price in the world, so we've seen a good stabilization in the last year of that bromine business, and so the bromine business is still a very healthy, strong, robust business for ICL. I think 2024 EBITDA margin's 25% ish range, and so I would, I would characterize really as really stabilized with slow or I don't wanna say slow, but a steady improvement probably expected in the next couple of years overall. I don't think we're expecting a hockey stick to go back to where it was previously.
I want to ask you a couple of questions. So one is on China, on your rock mine. I guess there's a lot of talk about depleting, depleted reserves there. So how do you see things there for your mine or perhaps for your competitors? The other is when you talk about the food business and a lot of the additives, I guess, preservatives, et cetera, there's all this discussion in the U.S. about clean labels now with RFK Jr. Is this a risk for your feed business, your food business here?
Yep, sure. Happy to answer and give you my opinion on both of those topics. So talking about the first, my view of China isn't necessarily a depletion of phosphate reserves. I think what you see in China moving forward in what we've been seeing going on is a change in the rock quality that they're using, right? So logically they started out using their highest quality rock in China, and now they're having to move to successively lower and lower quality rock. That brings additional costs, additional challenges with it, overall. I also think you see in China as well, right?
What we've seen, you know, with them, let's say completely out of the market during COVID and now with, you know, kind of seasonal export bans on that is one, making sure that they're preserving their internal market because it is a growing not only on the ag side, but you have in the competing space battery materials really growing pretty significantly inside China. So they have a strong internal demand around phosphate. So, you know, my personal view, it's always multiple factors there that are going on. It's the little bit of degradation of the rock quality. It's a little bit that they have a very strong and growing internal demand and want to make sure that they protect that and satisfy that internal demand in China.
So I don't see things changing from what's going on right now as far as China exporting less and less of their phosphate over time. I think it will continue, in the same way, that it has been, from that standpoint. You know, when you talk about food and talk about some of the trends in clean label, most definitely there is a trend towards clean label, in the food space. It's something we're also involved in. When I think about phosphates particularly as an ingredient, I don't see a lot of threat there around it not being considered or being considered a challenging thing on the label as we're again talking about a product that comes essentially from a natural rock source, as well. So it's not a highly processed, highly, you know, thought of maybe as a synthetic chemical, that's going into there.
So we don't see a lot of pressure on that side, but we do see opportunities. And this is an area talking about alternative protein to actually capitalize on some of that in the clean label space, in developing clean label ingredients in our food business as well. So one of the things we've seen in helping and formulating that alternative protein market, especially the meat side of things and meat analogs and alternative protein is when somebody is formulating with a plant-based protein, the last thing they usually wanna see on the label then is a lot of other chemically derived ingredients, right?
So now I chose to make a product out of pea protein or some other protein source, and then I need to use something like maybe carboxymethyl cellulose as a binder because plant-based protein doesn't have fat in it and it doesn't like to stick together. And so we've been very active in developing ingredients that can replace the functionality of many of these products that are not viewed as clean label today. And we do that from the basis, as I said before, of our knowledge of functional ingredients from that side.
So we look at that, very similar to what y'all have heard today and listening to some of the panels earlier today that are going on around using AI and advanced machine learning and tools to identify new chemicals, new things, new compounds that can replace functionality, whether that's in agriculture and herbicides or other things. We do the same things on the food space side of things where we're looking at and saying, okay, can we use that same technology when we identify a particular function we're after in food, and can we use that to help identify other compounds that would be considered clean label or friendly to replace the functionality of something that is not?
Mm-hmm. So what does that label have on it that includes your compound? Does it say, you know, phosphoric salt or what?
Yeah. So depending on which one is being used, so you might see phosphoric acid, you know, on there. You might see something like, so let's take a baking powder, right? You might see something like monocalcium phosphate, right? So, which is simply a phosphate molecule and a calcium molecule that have been put together to naturally derive things from naturally mined materials, which is one of the most common baking powders that you would see out there. So if you were looking at a baked good, especially something that was a fast rising baked good, you might see monocalcium phosphate on the label.
Okay. Hi, I just had a question again. It's not your area, but, I was gonna ask you about the evolution of the polyhalite market, you know, and how that's, you know, kind of enjoying management attention at the moment.
Yeah. So polyhalite is an interesting product, right? I mean, it has some definite good qualities and characteristics from being able to be considered an organic fertilizer from that standpoint and provide some other functional ingredients. I think some of the challenges in polyhalite are also that competing price profile with potash itself on the potassium, the on the K side of the molecule, as well. And so ICL has been doing a lot of work on their polyhalite business to make sure that we can deliver a good quality product that meets that functionality and label, you know, that people are looking for from that standpoint, but that can also be cost competitive in that.
And so a lot of focus on making sure that business is producing at a point from an efficiency standpoint that can allow that to happen.
Yeah, I've got two questions as well, if I can. Do you have any kind of M&A ambitions, so that's probably the first one, and second one, if I understand well, you know, you've got this, this region in Israel, the desert where you mine your, your phosphate. I think that's some sort of a concession. Seems very likely you'll get an extension, but perhaps could you elaborate maybe on the terms that you think you might be able to get for that extension, et cetera?
So actually we've already received the extension. So we have received a new concession on our phosphate mining and then the Negev for an additional 20 years at this point in time. So that's off the table from a phosphate standpoint. There are still other phosphates. So you'll see out there reserves in Israel that we would like to go after and develop for the future as well. There's an area called the Barir field that's still an interest for the future, but that's not a tomorrow thing. That's a five, six year down the road type of process where we're looking at the future and making sure that we secure not only today and the next year, but really out into the future as well. And the other question was.
M&A .
M&A .
So on the M & A side, sure, ICL is very active and interested in the M&A space. You know, our general strategy and philosophy around M&A , our strategy and philosophy as a company, right, is in the areas that we're gonna participate and compete in, we wanna be one of the top producers or top companies in that area. But we talk about the phosphate value chain, the bromine value chain, and so we use M&A to complement that, right, to help us to either grow and share or different application, or bolt-on type things to those business to help us become number one in that area. And so that's an area you've seen us been very active in in the last couple of years.
And I think you'll continue to see this is where we created the ambition to become one of the leading specialty fertilizers in our Growing Solutions division area. We've been putting a lot of focus on M&A in that area because we're not number one or two in that business like we are in some of our others. And so we're using M&A as one of those tools along with our internal organic development to help that, to move that business along in that. And I think if you look at the 2024 results compared to 2023, you start to see some of that really coming through where we've made acquisitions, we've integrated those acquisitions much more and starting to improve the efficiency and use of those assets.
You see that in the margin, but also in those acquisitions to use them to regionalize some of that business where we've historically moved more of those products around region to region. Some of the acquisitions now that we're doing, like a recent one in North America, CAF, to not only be a bolt-on acquisition for what I described before, but also to be able to be a regional base or hub for that expansion. So now we have a footprint in that Growing Solutions manufacturing in North America that we can now take portfolio products and things maybe we're making in another geography and bring that to a regional manufacturing within that.
Okay. We have run out of time. Very good. Well, sure. Appreciate it, Phil. Thanks for being with us today and please join me in thanking him for this presentation.