Mississippi Chemical Corporation

Making things grow for 50 years

BY ROBERT MCFARLAND, JR.

Like the Yazoo River that has twisted and turned through the Mississippi Delta carving a channel that is centuries old, Mississippi Chemical Corporation of Yazoo City has carved out a rich history that is intertwined with the people and the history of the Delta. This year marks the company's 50th year in business.
"Our success is due to a lot of extraordinary people who started this company," says President and CEO, Charles O. Dunn, the third leader in the company's history. "Owen Cooper, Charles Jackson, and others like Charles Whittington from Greenwood and LeRoy Percy from Greenville were very instrumental in overcoming a lot of adversity early on."
Mississippi Chemical has grown to become one of Mississippi's best success stories and is now also one of the South's largest manufacturers of fertilizer, producing three primary crop nutrients essential for high-yield agriculture. Since the beginning, the company's mission has remained the same: to feed the crops that feed the world.
Organized as a cooperative by 600 farmers in 1948, the company pioneered the farmer cooperative entrance into the nitrogen fertilizer market. In 1950, Mississippi Chemical constructed the first cooperative nitrogen fertilizer plant in the world in Yazoo City. The first ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was produced at the plant in March 1951 with the first ton of ammonia following in July. During its years as a cooperative, the company paid over $700 million in refunds to its shareholder-customers.
A Brief History
Mississippi Chemical was founded out of a desperate need for fertilizer to feed the swelling economy and population of post WWII. When farmers were left with nowhere to turn for this vital resource, Mississippi Farm Bureau Director, Owen Cooper, and member farmers met the challenge, against great odds, and built a nitrogen fertilizer plant to manufacture the needed nitrogen.
On farms across Mississippi and the nation, the years following WWII were desperate times. Even though great strides were being made in agricultural technology during the 1940s, farmers faced a dire shortage of nitrogen fertilizer. Production of bombs and ammunition during the war effort had depleted nitrogen reserves in both Europe and the U.S. Compounded by the fact that federal acreage controls placed stringent limits on the number of acres farmers could plant, the state and the nation faced severe food shortages if farmers were not able to get the fertilizer they needed to produce maximum yields per acre.
It was a group of Mississippi farmers who were the first to rise to the challenge of solving the nitrogen shortage problem. They were led by Mississippi Farm Bureau's young energetic executive, Owen Cooper. The Farm Bureau board voted on June 27, 1947 to create a committee to study the feasibility of farmers building their own nitrogen fertilizer facility.
After the feasibility study was completed, the committee voted to proceed with building a nitrogen plant which cost between $8 and $10 million. In early 1948, the Committee on Nitrogen Plant for Mississippi initiated the largest stock sales drive in the history of the state to build Mississippi Chemical. The sales efforts were conducted in 1948 and 1949, with the goal of raising $4 million. The task was daunting.
"This was a huge amount of money to raise back in those days," says Dunn. "Farmers had never put up this kind of money before as a collective group."
"Raising $4 million in Mississippi in the 1940s was about like raising $400 million today," Owen Cooper once stated in an interview. "It was a huge hurdle."
By the end of the sales drive in 1949, 7,000 Southern farmers had invested $3.25 million in Mississippi Chemical stock. They eventually invested another million in the project. Confident that the funds would be raised, six hundred farmers and farm leaders from six Southern states had gathered for the first Mississippi Chemical organized meeting on October 27, 1948. Twenty-two board members were elected and the company charter was signed. Yazoo City was selected as the site for the new plant in early 1949.
History was once again made when on April 19, 1949 Yazoo County voters approved a $750,000 Balance Agriculture with Industry bond issue for Mississippi Chemical. The bond issue was the largest in the history of the state and the 92 percent voter turnout was also the highest in state history.
The support of farmers in six Southern states, the successful stock sales and Yazoo County Bond issue success were all triumphs for Mississippi Chemical, and triumphs no one predicted. It was evident by the end of 1948 that the company would become a reality. On November 1, 1948 Cooper was hired as the company's president.
Before construction could begin, the remaining hurdle was the approval of the project and loan of the $3.4 million from the U.S. Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This postwar finance corporation helped finance new businesses and construction costs with the approval of Congress for the loans. Finally, on February 8, 1950, after much work by Cooper and southern congressmen, the loan was approved. Construction of the plant began in 1950.
Another milestone in the company's history was slated on March 16, 1951 when the engineers and construction crews overcame countless mechanical difficulties to turn out the first tons of ammonium nitrate solid fertilizer using outside ammonia sources.
To produce the final product, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, two plants had to be constructed. A nitric acid and ammonium nitrate plant had to be in place to produce the fertilizer. An anhydrous ammonia plant would supply the ammonia component. The construction of the ammonia plant was far more complex and costly than the nitric acid section of the plants.
The successful completion of the ammonia plant was crucial to the success of the fertilizer production process because this facility would take nitrogen out of the air and turn it into ammonia which is the first step in the fertilizer production process. Getting the ammonia plant built and running correctly turned out to be one of the most daunting tasks of the entire project.
In mid-July of 1951, Mississippi Chemical was up and running. During its first production year, the company sold 41,000 tons of ammonium nitrate and 10,000 tons of ammonia to its farmer-shareholders. The company had beaten the odds to do what many said could not be done. The untiring team of engineers, builders and laborers had built the first ammonium nitrate fertilizer plant in the country.
The Success Continues
Today, Mississippi Chemical's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol of GRO - something Owen Cooper would be proud of. In five decades, the company has grown to become the largest manufacturer in the U.S. of agricultural-grade ammonium nitrate fertilizer and Mississippi Chemical is the anchor for the economy of Yazoo City employing over 540 people at the Yazoo City production complex and headquarters facility. Not only has the company been an asset to Yazoo City, surrounding counties have also felt the economic impact. In 1996, Mississippi Chemical acquired Triad Nitrogen, Inc. of Donaldsonville, LA. Triad is a major urea fertilizer complex. Other arms of the company include a wholly owned subsidiary, Mississippi Potash, Inc., which operates two potash mines in Carlsbad, New Mexico and supplies potash fertilizer primarily to a trade area west of the Mississippi River. Another wholly owned subsidiary, Mississippi Phosphates Corporation, produces diammonium phosphate fertilizer at Pascagoula. Almost two-thirds of the fertilizer produced at Mississippi Phosphates is sold into international markets. The principal export markets are China, India, and Japan. The facility's location on the Gulf of Mexico allows Mississippi Phosphates to load ships for export directly from the company's deepwater port facility.
The company has also completed construction on its first production facility outside the U.S., called Farmland MissChem Limited. This facility is a joint venture with Farmland Industries, Inc. that will produce 1,850 metric tons per day of ammonia in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Mississippi Chemical's success will more than likely continue. As world populations grow, demand for increased agricultural production will become ever more urgent.
"The next 25 years in agriculture are going to include more changes than we have probably seen in the last 75 to 100 years," says Dunn. "The whole bio-tech revolution, the globalization of agriculture - all of these things will create much change at the farm level and at the farm supply level as well. The entire way in which we farm will change.
"It's hard to say what Mississippi Chemical's role will be in the next 25 years, in all of this change. However, I do feel that our role in the next five years will be to probably grow more internationally than domestically," says Dunn. "The domestic market for fertilizer is a mature one, it's not growing very much, but it is growing enough to warrant some of the expansions that we have done. The real growth in both population and the attempt to grow enough food to feed that population will occur off-shore mainly in Latin America and Asia. The population that we are talking about will increase by fifty percent over the next 25 years or so and we have to grow enough food to feed these people."
Like the familiar sight of Kudzu which covers the landscape surrounding Yazoo City, Mississippi chemical has become a land mark Mississippi company. The once small farmers coop has become a huge state and national success story, proving its motto, "Making Things Grow" to be an appropriate one in regard not only to the purpose of its product, but to the growth of the company itself.

Following the completion of the initial production plants, Mississippi Chemical CEO Owen Cooper embarked on a series of expansions and investment ventures and projects:

-Addition of fertilizer delivery terminals across the south
-Completion of a high-tech $12 million Kellogg ammonia plant at Yazoo City in 1966, revolutionizing the method and cost of making nitrogen fertilizer
-Owen Cooper and LeRoy Percy form Mississippi Action for Progress in 1966, the first partnership of both black an white business leaders working together
-Completion of the company headquarters building in Yazoo City in 1968
-Completion of the $40 million Triad nitrogen urea complex in 1970 in Louisiana. (MCC had a 50 percent interest at the time)
-MCC instrumental in organizing "Friends of Public Schools" in 1970
-MCC combined sales top $100 million-mark for first time in 1972. World's largest double-contact sulfuric acid plant begins operation in Pascagoula.
-President Owen Cooper, largely responsible for MCC's start and success, retires in 1973. The company celebrates its 25th anniversary.
-Thomas C. Parry becomes the company's second president in 1973

During the company's second 25 years, the corporate executives and employees have continued the tradition of hard work and success began by its founders. Milestones of the company's history since 1973 include:

-1973 - MCC president Thomas C. Parry and Mississippi Governor Bill Waller announce plans for a $43 million expansion program to increase ammonium nitrate production at Yazoo City from 400,000 to 550,000 tons a year and to augment NPK output at Pascagoula from 800,000 to 1,000,000 tons annually. A sizable portion of this investment would be employed to satisfy the federal air and water standards recently set by the EPA.
-1973 - MCC unveils its new slogan and themeline: "We Make Things Grow."
-1974 - MCC acquired the oldest and largest U.S. potash reserve and mine in Carlsbad, NM at a price of $20 million
-1975 - In its continued drive to obtain raw materials for fertilizer production, MCC purchases a major phosphate rock deposit near Wauchula, Florida
-1976 - MCC completes its $22 million waste water treatment unit in Pascagoula
- 1978 - MCC reaches 30 year mark. Production capacity now 2.5 million tons of fertilizer a year - 30 times the amount it originally produced at Yazoo City. Assets of the company grow to $350 million - 35 times the initial company capitalization of $10 million.
-1980-1981 - MCC paid out record patronage earnings of $53.6 million on sales of $395 million, both company records.
-1981 - MCC awarded state's "Salute To Industry Award" for launching a Yazoo City public school improvement program

-1986 - MCC creates a new subsidiary, Newsprint South, Inc. and in 1987 the company began construction of a state-of-the-art newsprint mill.
-1990-1991 - Nitrogen and potash demand, prices and profits rebounded to healthy levels. MCC reopens its Pascagoula facility.
-1993 - Thomas C. Parry retires as president of MCC after a twenty year term.
-1993 - Charles O. Dunn is named president and CEO of MCC, the third leader in the company's history.
-1994 - March 22, MCC's board of directors unanimously endorsed the conversion of MCC from a farmer-owned cooperative to a public company
-1994 - August 17, MCC stock went on sale on NASDAQ. MCC sold its five million shares of stock for $75 million.
-1996 - October 10, MCC offered on New York Stock Exchange under symbol of "GRO"
-1996 - April, MCC announces a $130 million expansion of its nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing facilities at Yazoo City
- 1996 - In August, MCC purchases the assets of Eddy Potash and New Mexico Potash as wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporation.
-July, 1997 - MCC announces an expansion at its Pascagoula facility. The project increased diammonium phosphate production to 900,000 tons per year.
-1998, May - MCC begins production at its 1,850 metric ton per day ammonia plant in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The facility is a joint venture with Farmland Industries, Inc. and is MCC's first facility outside the U.S.

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