An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia busi­ness re­porter

Nurtien Ltd is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its Trinidad ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues a strate­gic re­view of its shut­tered Point Lisas op­er­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained an in­ter­nal memo cir­cu­lat­ed to staff yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s quar­ter­ly earn­ings re­lease and con­fer­ence call.

In the memo yes­ter­day, Nu­trien Trinidad vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Ed­mund Thomp­son con­firmed the com­pa­ny is re­view­ing “all strate­gic op­tions” for its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial sale.

“As shared pub­licly, Nu­trien con­tin­ues to eval­u­ate all strate­gic op­tions for our Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions. This re­view con­sid­ers a full range of al­ter­na­tives, in­clud­ing the ex­plo­ration of a po­ten­tial sale of the fa­cil­i­ty. There is no pre­de­ter­mined out­come, and no de­ci­sions have been made,” the memo stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny al­so ac­knowl­edged un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the op­er­a­tion’s fu­ture.
“We ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing as this work con­tin­ues. We recognse that pe­ri­ods of un­cer­tain­ty can be dis­tract­ing, which is why main­tain­ing our fo­cus on safe­ty re­mains more im­por­tant than ever,” the memo added.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes as talks con­tin­ue be­tween Nu­trien and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) over the fu­ture of the plant.

Last Fri­day, NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen con­firmed dis­cus­sions had en­tered a more del­i­cate phase af­ter both par­ties signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment.

“Well, it has be­come even more sen­si­tive be­cause we signed our NDA (non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment) this week. Yes­ter­day, the Pres­i­dent re­mind­ed me that it doesn’t al­low us to say more than to re­peat what we said be­fore, which is that talks are on­go­ing be­tween NGC and Nu­trien,” Ramdeen said.

Asked whether Nu­trien in­tend­ed to re­main in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ramdeen de­clined to spec­u­late.

“What is hap­pen­ing in re­la­tion to those talks is some­thing that is at a very crit­i­cal stage. And I don’t want to give peo­ple un­sup­port­ed ex­pec­ta­tions. I don’t want to damp­en any­body’s ex­pec­ta­tions of what may hap­pen in that re­gard,” he added.

Nu­trien shut down the Point Lisas ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025.

In its first quar­ter 2026 fi­nan­cial re­port re­leased on Wednes­day, the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant con­firmed there has been “no pro­duc­tion from the Trinidad and New Madrid fa­cil­i­ties” since the con­trolled shut­down.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed it is “pro­gress­ing as planned with the re­view of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives for our phos­phate busi­ness, Trinidad ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty, and Brazil­ian re­tail busi­ness with a fo­cus on en­hanc­ing earn­ings qual­i­ty and free cash flow.”

Nu­trien did not de­tail what those strate­gic al­ter­na­tives may in­volve, but such re­views can in­clude pos­si­ble sales, re­struc­tur­ing, part­ner­ships, or as­set clo­sures.

De­spite un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the Trinidad op­er­a­tion, Nu­trien post­ed a sharp in­crease in prof­its for the first quar­ter of 2026.

Net earn­ings climbed to US$139 mil­lion com­pared to US$19 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year, dri­ven by stronger fer­tilis­er prices, record potash sales vol­umes, and im­proved per­for­mance in its ni­tro­gen and re­tail seg­ments.

Pres­i­dent and CEO Ken Seitz said the com­pa­ny re­mains fo­cused on in­vest­ing in op­er­a­tions it con­sid­ers more com­pet­i­tive and ef­fi­cient.
Nu­trien al­so main­tained its 2026 ni­tro­gen sales guid­ance at be­tween 9.2 mil­lion and 9.7 mil­lion tonnes. —An­drea Perez-Sobers