Atome has locked final investment terms for the $665mn Villeta complex, pressing ahead with a Paraguay hydro-powered plant as Middle East conflict scrambles fertiliser trade. Atome bets that low-cost renewable electricity can sever ammonia from natural gas, offering Latin America an alternative to choke-point supply lines that route a quarter to a third of global nitrogen exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

Most nitrogen output depends on hydrogen stripped from gas, so price spikes and route closures hit food systems fast. Green fertiliser instead splits water with renewable power, dodging fossil inputs that dominate cost structures. $420mn of debt and $245mn of equity back the scheme, with Yara International signing a decade-long offtake and Hy24 leading equity alongside the International Finance Corporation and European Investment Bank.

Electricity at roughly $30 per megawatt-hour is projected to underpin margins that investors target in double digits despite country risk. Construction advances toward 2029 output as backers frame the site less as climate gesture than as structural defence against gas volatility and geopolitical rupture. Output will remain below one percent of the nitrogen market yet aims to prove that localised, gas-free supply can anchor food production in import-dependent regions.