Fertilizers for the land of opportunity

KSNA currently has ten employees, eight of whom are from the USA. There is also one German employee and Richard Pinner, the Managing Director, who is English. Many employees have been with the company for a long time and their experience is an important success factor. The proportion of women is 40 percent and therefore well above the 11 percent for K+S as a whole.

When the new K+S potash plant in Bethune, Canada, started production in 2017, the framework conditions for KSNA fundamentally changed. Because now, for the first time, it was possible to transport K+S fertilizers to the USA by rail. Just at this time, in 2017, Richard Pinner joined KSNA from the UK as President and immediately had a major project on his plate. "At that time, I was able to use the experience and expertise of my Director of Sales, Trey Few and Director of Supply Chain, Dennis Liberatore. Together, we evaluated the north American potash market and developed a new strategy for KSNA," Pinner describes. This "go-to-market" strategy pursues the goal of establishing sustainable market share in North America over the long term whilst generating consistent revenues for K+S. "As K+S, we are very well established in the U.S. and enjoy an excellent reputation in the market," says Pinner. "Nevertheless, developing partnerships that add value to all parties and maintaining personal contact with customers is essential to our success in the American market."

Most of the products go to bulk agricultural customers, such as wholesalers or retailers that blend K+S potash with nitrogen as well as phosphate and subsequently supply it to farmers as a complex fertilizer. "Whereas KSNA's activities before Bethune were more focused on the U.S. East Coast, in recent years we have been able to expand the sales area significantly since we started rail shipments from Bethune," Pinner emphasizes. 

In 1954, K+S founded Potash Import & Chemical Corporation (PICC), its first sales company in North America. At that time, PICC was based in New York. On January 1, 2008, PICC was transformed into K+S North America and renamed accordingly. In 2015, the company moved from New York to Chicago to take advantage of back-office synergies with the former K+S subsidiary Morton Salt.  

Managing Director Richard Pinner is passionate about sales. Richard grew up on a farm in Cambridge, England. He began his sales career at the age of 19, selling cars to American military personnel in Kaiserslautern, Germany. In 1998, he returned to England and from then on worked for an agricultural trader and retailer. It was there that he became more involved with fertilizers, which he sold to local farmers. In 2005 he joined K+S UK & Eire as Sales Manager, coming from a subsidiary of the agri-trading company Cargill, ultimately rising to become Managing Director for K+S UK & Eire in 2010. In 2017, he followed the call to the US and was appointed President of K+S North America. “Managing a K+S subsidiary is always interesting, and diverse. You’re exposed to all the different aspects and processes across our business – marketing, sales, logistics, invoicing, banking, forecasting, reporting, HR, and so on”. “I’ve also always enjoyed our broad product portfolio. Talking fertilizers to farmers one minute then high purity products with food manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies the next!”.