Midwest Fertilizer Statement On Indiana Governor's Announcement

INDIANAPOLIS, May 17, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Midwest Fertilizer Corporation (MFC), a consortium of international investors from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, expressed its disappointment with Governor Mike Pence's announcement today – and at the same time thanked the tireless efforts of the people of Southern Indiana for their continuing support of the company's proposed state-of-the-art fertilizer manufacturing plant in Posey County. This $1.8 billion project in Mount Vernon calls for the creation of approximately 2,500 jobs during three years of construction and 300 permanent, high-wage jobs.

Nevertheless, Midwest Fertilizer is optimistic – working together with the Posey County Economic Development Partnership and the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana – that a joint effort will be successful. The company is continuing to explore the full range of options to try and advance this critical project to manufacture nitrogenous fertilizer for thousands of farmers in Indiana and the Midwest.

Even in light of today's decision, the company emphasized that The Fatima Group – one of the investors in Midwest Fertilizer Corporation and headquartered in Pakistan – has implemented a comprehensive product stewardship program in Pakistan that tracks product from factory to farm, as well as voluntarily suspended sales of Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) fertilizer to the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan along the Afghan border. These initiatives have already been acknowledged as significant and meaningful by the U.S. Departments of Defense and State.

As part of their longstanding relationship, Midwest Fertilizer's affiliates at The Fatima Group have been working directly with Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, Director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), and other military leaders to share their breakthrough development of a reformulated ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The new fertilizer is more inert, less explosive, and therefore less susceptible to misuse by insurgents and terrorists.

Following a visit to Pakistan earlier this month, General Barbero said: "recently the fertilizer industry, Fatima Group, has made and taken a number of steps, they have pulled Calcium Ammonium Nitrate," from two key provinces. He added: "They think they have come up with a reformulation that is [a] less detonable composition of CAN and they have agreed to joint testing which we are going to do next month. They have joined the international fertilizer association voluntarily which makes them subject to audits of their product security. Overall, recently a lot of progress [has been made] with Pakistan military and from the fertilizer industry."

SOURCE Midwest Fertilizer Corporation