(Yicai Global) June 18 -- Fertilizer additive product provider Hubei Forbon Technology plans to form a joint venture with Morocco's OCP Group, an exporter of phosphate rock and phosphoric acid, the former announced yesterday.

The JV will be set up in Wuhan, capital of China's central Hubei province with a registered capital of up to USD10 million. Yingcheng, Hubei-based Forbon and Casablanca-based OCP will each hold a 50 percent stake and voting rights. It will be OCP's first research and development center in the Asia Pacific region, the announcement said.

The JV will be principally engaged in the R&D of conventional fertilizers, value-added fertilizers, smart agriculture, the recycling economy and phosphates.

Forbon and OCP penned a framework cooperation agreement in June last year to spur the latter's utilization of phosphate rock and enhance the added value of its phosphate rock products to expand its African agricultural market. The setup of the JV is a continuation of this agreement.

Forbon provides technology, services and product solutions for fertilizer companies to achieve sales of fertilizer additives. It acquired Holland Novochem, Europe's largest fertilizer additive company, in 2015.

OCP is the world's leading phosphoric acid maker, one of its largest fertilizer producers and controls the world's largest phosphate rock base. It has 50 billion tons of ore reserves suitable for commercial extraction, making up 75 percent of the global total.Humanity's  burgeoning population could not feed itself without phosphate rock.  Phosphate and nitrogen are the two indispensable ingredients in  synthetic fertilizer, online news magazine The Atlantic reported. Unlike  nitrogen, which makes up 78 percent of the atmosphere, phosphate is a  finite resource that is impossible to manufacture.

Morocco holds  over 72 percent of all the globe's phosphate-rock reserves, a recent US  Geological Survey study found. The number two country, China, has just  under 6 percent, per the study. 

Editor: Ben Armour