"The best way to wrap it up is that the industry is enjoying a very healthy upturn," says David Batt, president of the Florida Phosphate Councilin Tallahassee. "It is a cyclical industry, it ebbs and flows, but we're at a good point now." Domestic growth is steady and demand from overseas, most notably India and China, remains strong. For the eight phosphate companies in the state, the growing China market is particularly good news. "Currently, they are purchasing at a very nice, steady flow," Batt says.
PaulBarrett of PCS Phosphate in White Springs says his company enjoyed a successful year because of that foreign trade relationship, as wellas an ongoing increase in domestic demand. According to recent figures, more than 25% of phosphate mined in Florida is exported as fertilizer and other phosphate products, while the remaining 75% is used domestically.
A.l. Holmes, vice president of phosphate operations for CF Industries in Bartow, says the industry can expect a solid, profitable path, so long as agriculture in Florida and the U.S. remains strong. If farmers have abundant crops to ship overseas, then they need fertilizer to keep the cycle going. "In Florida, half of what we (CF Industries) produce gets exported and half of that goes to China," Holmes says. "The slow deregulation in terms of farming and both NAFTA and other trade openings in the world have been pretty good for farmers, and that's who our customers are."
Phosphate companies are meeting the growing demand for fertilizer by opening new mines. last year, CF Industries expanded its Hardee County Phosphate Complex. The new mine is expected to be a reliable source of phosphate rock wellinto the next century. IMC-Agrico Co. in Mulberry also is opening mines, two of them. The Ona and Pine level mines, located in Polk County, should be through the state's permitting process by March, with full operation to start by May, says T.P. "Tip" Fowler, the company's senior vice president for operations.
Complementing growing demand, industry consolidation in the last couple of years has improved the economics of phosphate mining and production. For example, Tampa-based Cargill Fertilizer acquired parts of the now-defunct Mobil Mining and Minerals, and Batt says the trend has streamlined the way the industry does business and contributed to profitability. "Three or four years ago, most of these companies were in the red; now they're in the black," he says. "I'd have to say all of them because none of the Florida phosphate operations were making money then. Now they are."
Mike Lloyd, a research director at the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research, says that "almost without exception their most recent earnings are up." Lloyd also says there is still room for growth in the industry. "They haven't reached the point where they've used all the capacity."
During 1996, the last year for which complete figures are available, more than 35.3 million tons of phosphate were pulled from 6,273 acres in Florida. The phosphate industry's total payroll was $423 million. But while the phosphate mining industry looks healthy and industry officials are generally optimistic, the Florida Department of Labor and Employment Security predicts that jobs in the mining industry will decline between 1995 and 2000. The bulk of that drop will be in the mining of nonmetallic minerals, such as phosphate. As a result, the department projects that by 2005 the number of people employed in the industry will dip to about 5,929, a drop of 5% compared to the 6,277 employed in 1996.
Construction Workers Wanted
The state's construction industry has a problem. There's plenty of work - residential and commercial- but most of the state's builders don't have the manpower they need to get the jobs finished, fast.
The bulk of construction work in the state has shifted from south Florida to central and north Florida, according to Arch Mclean, executive director, Florida Association of General Contractors. "Orlando, in my opinion, tops the list for activity. There is just a tremendous amount of work in the area. The only place that I've heard where it might not be as good in terms of some of the others is south Florida, but there's always renovation there," he says.
As for north Florida, Jacksonville continues to be in a building mode, and the Panhandle and northwest Florida could experience a construction boom with the decision by St. Joe Corp. to start developing parts of its 1.1 million-acre Florida holdings.
But without the manpower to do the building, says Mclean, construction company backlogs could become greater. "We are doing everything we can to address the need and we're making progress, but the supply still has not caught up with demand. Most of the people that I talk to not only have plenty of work, but they have a good backlog of work, too," he says.
Still, companies are reveling in the amount of commercial and residential work available, says David Croom, president of Vero Beach-based Croom Construction Co., a home and business builder. Croom says his company has been devoted to the commercial side of the construction coin, a choice necessitated by demand. "There's a lot of large retail malls and that sort of thing that have come to this area of the east coast, and that has caused an upsurge in commercial activity."
Will It Fly?
Increased efficiency means cutting costs, and to that end IMC-Agrico Inc. approached Magplane Technology Inc. about building a scaled-down version of a bullet train to move phosphate ore from the mine to the processing plant to the port.
Now, IMC's Mulberry facility is ground zero for transporting ore a new way that could slash transportation costs by 75%, according to David Carrier, a Magplane officer, one of the program's developers and a private consultant with Argila Enterprises in Lakeland. "It should be far more energy efficient and environmentally sound. It also simplifies the operations of the company because they don't have to have as big a stockpile," Carrier says.
Mike Lloyd of the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research, which is partly funding the project, says: "This would be, in essence, a tube-like gadget about three feet in diameter with small-size cars in it." Forty miles per hour is target speed for the lightweight little cars. Magplane's mini-bullet train could handle over 40 million tons of ore a year and could be placed just about anywhere the industry needed it. "It wouldn't be difficult to bore under highways and put in a pipeline for it," he says.
It's not levitation. That's only practicalat speeds of 200 or 300 miles per hour. "You really don't want to carry your ore at 200 miles per hour anyway," Carrier says. The train car would carry a smaller amount, maybe about 500 pounds compared to 20 tons in a truck or 100 tons in a railcar. But instead of sending a truck once or twice a day, the train could move the rock continuously, every five seconds.
It's like something out of a science fiction novel, but Carrier, whose company tried to push a people-mover train in Florida a couple of years ago, says this is more practical in application, and cheaper, too. Ultimately, Magplane has loftier plans.