"No time to ignore 'blood phosphates'', 15th of July 2019.

“The indigenous Sahrawi people accuse the New Zealand fertilizer companies of helping prop up their oppression. In the same way that blood diamonds refer to precious stones mined to finance a warlord's activities, they say what is being mined in Western Sahara is rightly called ‘blood phosphate'.”

In 2012, Ravensdown and Ballance were the two New Zealand companies of 15 companies, from 13 countries, buying Western Sahara phosphate. By the end of last year, the number of companies went down to four.  That includes Sinofert, a Chinese company importing small quantities, Paradeep, which is a subsidiary of Moroccan-owned OCP, and the two New Zealand companies, which are believed to have each imported between 215,000 and 228,000 tonnes of Western Sahara phosphate last year, worth a combined NZ$57 million.

Worldwide, New Zealand's two largest fertilizer companies, Ravensdown and Ballance Agri-Nutrients, are the sole-remaining, substantial, foreign buyers of Western Sahara phosphate. It puts New Zealand in the international, political spotlight because Western Sahara is not a sovereign territory but a region occupied by Morocco. Western Sahara is 266,000km2 of mostly desert on the northwest coast of Africa. It is home to half a million mainly Muslim Arabic-speaking Saharawi people. What it lacks in the grass, the region makes up for in growth-promoting phosphate rock, abundant fish stocks and what is believed to be an untapped offshore oil resource.

Ravensdown spokesman Gareth Richards says it is a complex geopolitical dispute that needs to be resolved at a government level via the UN.

Ballance spokesman David Glendining says his company's operations also meet UN requirements regarding non-self-governing territories.