Yara International ASA
Fertilizers
Yara's origin story is one of the great chemistry breakthroughs of the industrial age: in 1905, physicists Kristian Birkeland and Sam Eyde figured out how to fix nitrogen from the air using an electric arc — a process that required so much power they built Norway's first hydroelectric plants to feed it. That company, Norsk Hydro, later spun off its fertilizer division as Yara, now the world's largest nitrogen fertilizer producer with about 17,000 employees and annual sales near US$15 billion.
Modern Yara is less about arc furnaces and more about precision agriculture: its crop nutrition programs combine NPK fertilizers, micronutrients, and digital tools that tell farmers exactly what a field needs, reducing over-application. The company also runs a large ammonia shipping fleet and is a pioneer in green ammonia — its Yara Birkeland, an autonomous, zero-emission container ship, began commercial operations in 2022.
For procurement, Yara matters in two supply chains: agricultural inputs (urea, nitrates, NPK blends) and industrial ammonia used in everything from explosives to semiconductor fabs and emissions-control systems.
