ITC Dosing Pumps has had an important activity in iAgua in recent months, because its dosing systems help different activities related to the water sector:
- Drinking water treatment.
- Sewage treatment.
- Cooling towers.
- Fertigation in agriculture.
- Landscaping and gardening.
- Industrial processes (food and beverage industry, paper industry and mining)
Given the importance of fertigation today in modern agriculture, Xavier Corbella invited me a few weeks ago to visit the facilities of Santa Perpètua de Mogoda and the main team leaders. In a time when we are recovering normalcy, this contact with people is appreciated. I shared a day with the following people.
- Anton Planas (President and founding partner of ITC).
- Xavier Corbella (CEO and director of the technical department).
- Alberto Hernández (Sales manager).
- Xavier Martínez (Area Manager).
- Oriol Torrano (Marketing).
–
1. Company history
In the image of this post we are at the entrance of the facilities Anton Planas, Xavier Corbella and a server. It is always very enriching to listen to a person who founded the company and how he explains in the first person the history of a company that has seen it grow.
–
The history dates back to 1985 when ITC SC was founded, a cooperative that grew to provide technology to enable fertilization through localized irrigation using the Fertic pump. Subsequently, 4 partners of the Barcelona delegation formed an SL in 1993: Anton Planas, Josep Segura, Josep Roca and Isidre Gómez.
Among the milestones that Anton highlighted is that the following year they already had a delegation in Miami, which would later move to California. The resources they had were used to increase exports. 28 years ago, globalization was not understood as it is today.
In the US market, the company is ITC Injection Tecnical Control. In 2009, a Join Venture was held in India, and subsequently other international markets such as Australia, India, Russia, etc. have been opened. The international activity carried out during all these years has led the company to export representing 70% of its sales.
An important milestone was the inauguration in 2017 of the new company headquarters. A very well designed industrial warehouse, where all the company’s departments are centralized.
Anton’s words reminded me of Xavier Marcet’s lectures. The company must combine the generation of profits with the creation of decent jobs (remuneration, training, professional growth). There are currently 23 workers, with the forecast of reaching 35 in 2025. In this sense, it coincided with the news that appeared this September that it is increasingly difficult to find experienced agronomists.
This visit was a journey of the digitization of dosing and I was struck by how Antón defended the digital transformation of irrigated agriculture. Taking advantage of the technology available in Agriculture is within our reach.
2. Product range
The company’s product range is mainly focused on 3 types of products.
- Dosing pumps (electric, hydraulic or magnetic).
- Stirrers.
- Controllers. Monitoring and control of different variables (Flow, pH, Electrical conductivity, Chlorine).
Along this journey, digitization has improved the performance of the products: they are digital, they are more precise and at the same time they can be controlled remotely.
In the image, in the Training Lab, you can see the DS Stream launched in 2021. An electric metering pump with an adjustment range of 1: 3,000, and with a flow according to the models from 1 to 60 l / hour. The dosage could be decreased continuously to very small values.
–
In the dosage of products that are concentrated, it is very important to carry out a correct stirring so that the concentration of the solution is maintained at all times.
Finally, there are the irrigation controllers where it can be seen and controlled from a Tablet or from the PC. The following 2 screens present the information that can be accessed, in which we have for each day which program is running at any given time and we can see the level of the different fertilizer tanks.
–
–
3. Commercial vision
In the dining room we reviewed with Alberto some of the main commercial milestones. He shared how their dosing equipment is included in the main manufacturers of pivots, and how in countries like Romania facilities with pivots are carried out on a surface of 50,000 ha.
They also highlighted their activity in landscaped areas of the Middle East where they have participated in very significant projects.
–
Visits to companies allow you to see things that cannot be seen in video conferences. In the dining room there was a table football for workers / visitors. This confirms Antón’s words to dignify jobs.
Many technology companies teach how they have table football or other games for their workers to disconnect. Companies that work for the water / irrigation sector also have them.
–
4. Agronomic vision
With Xavier Martínez we had a talk between agronomists and we agreed that work should be done on improving fertigation to avoid environmental impacts, and also to improve the profitability of the farms.
Some of the advantages that metering pumps provide are:
- Higher precision and efficiency. Application of a product regardless of the pressure, flow or speed of the water in the network and the viscosity / density and level of the fertilizer tank, etc.
- Traceability and ease of use. Having these dosing equipment allows you to have information in real time about the products applied.
- Energy saving. The use of venturis forces the pumping equipment to be oversized all the hours of irrigation, whether or not there is fertilization. In a similar installation, it is possible to go from 4.5 kW to 0.55 kW with dosing technology.
- Volume reduction and filling frequency. Working with precise equipment allows working with more concentrated products, thus reducing the volume of fertilizer tanks and facilitating the logistics of fertilizers.
- Installation optimization. Having smaller fertilizer tanks or equipment that allows direct injection, without the need for premix chambers, makes it possible to design more compact facilities.
- More security. Reducing the handling of fertilizers and acids increases safety for workers.
–
We also discussed with Xavier how important it is in protected agriculture to properly disinfect the water that is reused. Having equipment that enables the same amount of disinfectant to be available at all times is a phytosanitary guarantee.
5. Importance of precision fertigation
I often comment that if we have room for improvement in optimizing precision irrigation, we still have a further way to go in fertigation because the nutritional needs of crops are different, and because there are different fertilizers and concentrations.
Water is an increasingly scarce resource, so its management must be increasingly sustainable and efficient. In the case of fertilization, agricultural activity must become increasingly efficient and sustainable for 2 main reasons.
- Leachate must be reduced to reduce contamination of water bodies.
- Fertilizer losses should be minimized to improve farm profitability.
Water, unless it is a community of irrigators with desalinated water or important pumping, does not usually represent a high percentage of the costs of the crop. Fertilization costs for some crops do represent significant percentages.
During the month of September different news have appeared about the significant increase in the price of fertilizers. In a news Agronewscastillayleón, according to the data collected by COAG, the price of some fertilizers has increased significantly. For example, that of diammonium phosphate, they have increased almost 100% this year compared to the previous year and the rise has not yet stopped. In other cases such as potassium chloride or the 15-15-15 complex, prices rise 85 percent in the first case, and almost 70 percent in the second. In the case of nitrogen fertilizers, which are used in cover, the rise exceeds 60%.
I wanted to consult an official source for the evolution of prices. I have consulted the price of fertilizers on the Ministry’s website. Although we are in October, the series of available data ends in May. Between the end of 2020 and May 2021, the price of diammonium phosphate has increased by 24%. This value is lower than the one mentioned in the news, but it is evident that there are 4 months left in the data series.
–
According to Alexis Maxwell, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, other European fertilizer producers are likely to close, and nitrogen prices will continue to rise due to supply shortages.
My friend José María Montull shared on Twitter that this year the price of corn is expensive, and that the prices of fertilizers were still low. We will have to analyze how the prices of the products evolve, but also the rest of the inputs that are necessary for the production of food.
The increase in the price of fertilizer prices, directly related to the price of energy, can help farms adjust the fertilizer doses applied.
– .
