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K+S Aktiengesellschaft

K+S AG

Die Interessenvertretung der K+S Aktiengesellschaft dient dem Zweck, das grundsätzliche Verständnis für die Rohstoffgewinnung von Kali- und Steinsalzen, deren Wertschöpfung und volkswirtschaftliche Bedeutung im politischen Umfeld zu fördern.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Dorota Denning (Cabinet of Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis) and European farmers and

28 Oct 2025 · Roundtable on Simplification for Agricultural Innovation

Meeting with Christian Holzleitner (Head of Unit Climate Action)

16 Sept 2025 · Exchange on latest developments on the carbon farming methodologies.

Response to Critical Medicines Act

27 Feb 2025

Support and strengthening of domestic production is the easiest way to achieve goals of Critical Medicines Act for potassium and magnesium salts The EU Commission announced a proposal for a Critical Medicines Act on 30th January 2025. The overall goal is to support the security of supply and the availability of critical medicinal products, and to support the availability and accessibility of other medicinal products of common interest. Different measures are proposed to achieve these goals, ranging from facilitating investments to diversify manufacturing capacities to collaborative procurement. K+S is EUs biggest producer of potassium chloride. Additionally, we offer several magnesium sulfate products. Both minerals are included in the EUs list of critical medicines for their use in intravenous solutions. As such, they do not only serve as an active substance itself but are also important ingredients for many medicines needing carrier fluids like most vaccines. In contrast to many other producers, K+S holds the whole production process in one hand. We extract the potassium and magnesium minerals ourselves. Our mines in Germany operate under highest environmental and occupational safety and health standards. Once the mineral is brought to light, we process it ourselves. Through strict quality standards and constant monitoring, we can ensure the high quality necessary for medical applications. To achieve the goal of a more resilient supply of critical medicines, careful considerations need to be made. In the case of mineral based medicines, resilience cannot be assessed solely based on the number of suppliers. The production of these products is always reliant on the mining as the first step of the process. Natural deposits for potassium are aggregated in Canada and the US, Russia and Belarus, and China. However, with Germany and Spain there are also two EU member states with considerable stocks. Therefore, we welcome the EU Commissions initiative to support and strengthen domestic production. Facilitating investments is an important step to secure production processes and further promote extension of production capacities and the transition to even more environmentally friendly processes. Alongside, planning security could be increased by decreasing administrative burdens including reporting obligation. This way, producers could focus more on the most important aspect: providing high quality medicines, reliably and consistently.
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Meeting with Kerstin Jorna (Director-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs)

11 Sept 2024 · Discussion on the challenges of Potash and Salt Industry

Response to Statistics on nutrients

7 May 2024

K+S welcomes the opportunity to comment on the draft regulation regarding statistics on nutrients. As EU's biggest manufacturer of potash fertilizers, our products play an important role in ensuring sufficient supply of potassium which plays an important role in several physiological processes in plants including the water management. Thus, sufficient K-supply becomes even more important in times of extended draught events. It highly contributes to improving yields and to minimizing negative impacts of climate change on EU's food security. Therefore, K+S follows the Farm to Fork strategy and its legal actions very closely. We support the goal to reduce nutrient losses by at least 50%. It would bring huge benefits to the protection of air, water, soil, and biodiversity. But one cannot forget about the second half of this goal: to ensure no deterioration on soil fertility. This is crucial. Without fertile soil, agriculture does not work. And for high yield agriculture, using fertilizers to compensate for deprived nutrients is essential. Consequently, fertilizers are necessary to enable sustainable agriculture, ensure EU's food production and decrease dependencies from imports. Thus, we are very concerned that in the recitals, it is stated that this regulation shall provide the databases to monitor the advance in reducing the fertilizer input. The numbers on potash fertilizers provided by Eurostat have been systematically wrong. APEP criticized and corrected the numbers already several times in the newly formed Fertilizers Market Observatory of the EU Commission. We do not expect any improvements in the statistics' quality from this new regulation regarding potash. Consequently, the numbers are inappropriate to evaluate any reduction targets. But more importantly: Simplifying a complex goal of 50% less nutrient loss to 20% less fertilizers input does not do justice to agricultural reality. Such blank reduction targets are not appropriate and fail the goal to preserve soil fertility. There are good reasons for EU's nitrate directive and many national activities regarding nitrogen and phosphorous monitoring and reduction targets. With the detailed nutrient balances introduced in this regulation, future actions may become more effective. They may and should be used to reduce the nutrient excess. Additionally, it will also benefit farmers who will need to buy and use less fertilizers and consumers who may benefit from lower production costs. Therefore, this opportunity to optimize input materials and protect the environment will bring huge benefits. A general reduction target will not as negative impacts on the yield will directly transfer to more imports of food produced at mostly lower environmental standards at higher prices. Regarding potassium, there is no adverse effect of potash fertilizers on the environment or biodiversity known. Especially in the water compartment, monitoring data are readily available throughout the whole EU, and no negative impact has been observed in almost 150 years of mineral potash fertilizers. Reducing the input of potash fertilizers by 20% will have a significant impact on the yield, and even more so if drought periods occur. Thus, EU's food security will be endangered without any benefit for the environment. Conclusion As a result, K+S does not criticize this regulation in general but the way the provided statistics will be used in the future. Blank reduction targets may have tremendous impact on EU's food security without bringing benefits. Additionally, there are several shortcomings in the proposed methodology for the nutrient balances as elaborated in the input provided by APEP. Therefore, we promote careful consideration of statistics, intensive exchange with all stakeholders in agriculture, and the use of more specific, targeted measures (e.g. based on the nutrient balances) to archive the goal of a more sustainable and environmentally friendly use of nutrients in agriculture.
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