UPDATE 1-US fertilizer imports helping fund Russian war effort, CF Industries says

(Updates Thursday story with data on U.S. imports by company; adds byline)

By Rod Nickel and Richa Naidu

May 2 (Reuters) - U.S. agriculture companies have been brisk importers of Russian fertilizer since the 2022 Ukraine invasion, a practice that is unwittingly helping fund Russia's war against Ukraine, U.S. producer CF Industries said on Thursday.

The U.S. does not impose sanctions directly on Russian fertilizer, which is important to global food supplies and prices. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued hundreds of fresh sanctions on other Russian targets over the war.

"What's kind of shocking is there's been all of this focus on not funding the Russian war machine and not buying Russian gas," CF's CEO Tony Will said on a quarterly earnings call. "And yet, the U.S. is arms wide open to take urea and UAN (urea ammonium nitrate) coming out of Russia, which is effectively just natural gas that's been converted (into fertilizer).

"So the U.S. is funding the very war effort over there that on the one hand it’s condemning."

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The biggest U.S. urea importers from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to March 2024 are ECO Fertilizers, Swiss-based EuroChem and U.S. grain-handling giant Archer-Daniels-Midland, according to U.S. import data provided to Reuters by ImportYeti, a company that provides information about suppliers by tracking bills of lading.

ECO Fertilizers, the company Russian fertilizer producer Acron Group uses to import into the U.S., according to CF, imported about 575 million metric tons during the period.

The company's address is listed online as Hollywood, Florida, but it could not be immediately reached at its email address.

EuroChem, founded by Russian businessman Andrey Melnichenko, imported at least 81 million tons of urea from Russia via its U.S. subsidiaries.

ADM imported at least about 16.8 million tons of urea from Russia between February 2022 and March 2024 via five subsidiaries. Some grain handlers, which buy crops from farmers, use those relationships to sell growers inputs such as fertilizer as well.

EuroChem and ADM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CF, based in Illinois, is one of the world's biggest nitrogen fertilizer producers and competes against Russian imports. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas and the U.S. has imposed sanctions on a project owned by Russia's largest producer of liquefied natural gas.

CF does not import Russian fertilizer, company spokesperson Chris Close said.

Will did not say whether CF is calling on the U.S. to sanction Russian fertilizer.

Wholesale producers typically sell fertilizer to separate retail companies that sell it directly to farmers, or through their own retail stores. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Richa Naidu in London; additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Jonathan Oatis)