KuibyshevAzot Drops Its Kursk Fertilizer Plant Site, Keeps the Project Vehicle Alive

KuibyshevAzot has abandoned the construction of a mineral fertilizer plant at its Kursk site. The company will continue examining other possible locations for the complex both within Kursk Oblast and in neighbouring oblasts of the Central Federal District, leaving alive a project that regional authorities first announced six years ago.

What the cancelled project was

Kursk Oblast authorities announced the chemical plant project of KuibyshevAzot back in 2019. According to data current as of February 2023, the plan concerned a complex for producing mineral fertilizers from natural gas. Its capacity could have reached 200,000 tonnes of ammonia, 800,000 tonnes of urea and 365,000 tonnes of urea-ammonium mixture a year. The investment was estimated at 75 billion rubles, and the project was expected to create around 200 jobs.

In August 2022, the holding registered a special-purpose company for the project in Kursk — KurskAzot LLC. According to Rusprofile data, the parent company is the sole owner of the entity. The withdrawal from the specific site therefore does not mean the death of the vehicle: on the contrary, in late October 2025 the beneficiary increased the company's charter capital from 3.2 billion to 4 billion rubles — even though for the previous three years the company had operated with zero revenue and losses.

Protest and the regional chemical backdrop

Residents of Kursk came out against the construction of the chemical plant, a conflict that regional business coverage tracked in detail. The decision to drop the Kursk site came against a broader shift in the region's chemical footprint: in mid-October 2025, Kurskkhimvolokno announced a logistics centre project in Kursk worth 1.1 billion rubles, to be implemented in stages through 2028 — first two warehouses of 2,500 square metres each, then a terminal for transloading 40-foot containers, and finally a class A warehouse complex covering 10 hectares.

What the numbers describe

Stages of the cancelled 75-billion-ruble Kursk fertilizer plant project

200,000 tonnes of ammonia, 800,000 tonnes of urea and 365,000 tonnes of urea-ammonium mixture per year — the design capacity of the cancelled site.
75 billion rubles — the estimated investment in the complex.
Around 200 jobs — the expected employment effect.
4 billion rubles — the enlarged charter capital of the project company KurskAzot, raised in late October 2025 after three years of zero revenue.
2019 — the year Kursk Oblast authorities first announced the project.

What to watch next

The key indicator is the fate of KurskAzot itself. A project vehicle whose capital is being enlarged while its host site is being abandoned points to relocation rather than cancellation: the company has said it will keep working through options in Russia's Kursk Oblast and the surrounding Central Federal District. The 75-billion-ruble price tag, the gas-to-fertilizer configuration and the protest record all travel with the project to whatever locality comes next — and the same economics that made Kursk attractive will now be tested against a second region's infrastructure, gas logistics and social consent.