The world is facing an epochal challenge:
Ensuring global food security without
destroying our environment.
Global population is expected to reach 10 billion people
by 2050, so the only way
to ensure global food security is to increase yields.
The problem is, if we do the same thing we did in the past,
it will have a huge cost on the environment.
OCP is an African company
and a global leader in phosphate fertilizers
focusing on providing customized fertilizers
and fertility solutions to farmers across the globe.
Our goal is to accelerate a just transition
to a nature-positive agriculture,
reconciling both yield improvement and climate action.
One of the main challenges we face is the technology
readiness to reach the decarbonization targets.
For example, for green ammonia production, the scale needed
for the climate transition is still a challenge,
and the system efficiency is also key to address the cost gap.
Another big challenge is that 85% of our greenhouse gas emissions are indirect
and come from our Scope 3 emissions. Much of it is generated at the farmer gate.
We believe there is a competitive advantage in being our
industry's sustainability leader
and being a role model in our operations.
We have set very ambitious climate targets
and we are delivering on them.
We have committed to carbon neutrality in our industrial
base and energy sources by 2030, as well
as carbon neutrality on all our direct
and indirect emissions in our products
and their use by 2040.
OCP aims to supply all its industrial facilities with green energy
by 2027 using wind, solar, and co-generation sources.
We are investing $13 billion in the next five years
to drive the development of
sustainable climate-positive agricultural solutions.
The program addresses our core business of phosphate rock
and fertilizers' availability and quality,
but it also focuses on unconventional water production,
mainly desalination
and wastewater treatments, as well as green energy
and green hydrogen and green ammonia developments.
To secure execution, each business unit has a clear mandate on which they are accountable.
Leadership is supporting execution but they have to make it happen. We call them ‘Must Win Battles’.
The vision behind launching UM6P was to
enable OCP, at the beginning, to have access to worldwide
research platforms, researchers, faculty,
and at the same time giving access to its employees
to education in different areas. A new way
of doing agriculture, a new way
of enabling this green revolution,
taking into account the nature of the soil, the nature
of the crops, the needs of the crops,
and all that is now possible thanks
to the science, technology, knowledge developed in the
different labs of UM6P. OCP is building strategic
objectives based on the sustainability framework.
Now, how to deliver that?
We have some solutions that are here, some patents,
and we need to bring them to the industrial level.
And this is the role of a subsidiary
of UM6P called InnovX, which has a mandate to
bring all the knowledge to create value
for not just the group, but for all the continent.
Soil is a major asset for humankind, a home
to 25% of the world's biodiversity,
and it contains two to three times the carbon
that you find in the atmosphere.
So focusing on soil
and soil health is a way
to improve agriculture productivity,
and at the same time, sequestering carbon,
improving the resilience of agriculture and its performance.
So with the right fertilization practices
and conservation practices,
agriculture has the potential not only to maintain
high yields, but also to move from
a net contributor to global warming
to a net carbon sink and contribute to climate action.
And OCP is making its mission to contribute
to this transition.
We are working on an innovative business model
that would reward farmers based on their efforts
to sequester carbon in soils.
Moreover, we are tackling supply chain bottlenecks
through industrial local integration in order
to promote local capabilities
and inclusive developments while reducing
overall production costs.
The most important thing for us is impact: impact on communities,
impact on economic growth within Africa.