​In keeping with the spirit of “April Fools Day” we posted a news item yesterday evening entitled “Price Gouging or Price Reality? Anhydrous Ammonia Prices Climb 60% Since Fall”. While there was a grain of truth to the news item it is not in the main correct. Yes ammonia is widely used in the heat treatment industry, mainly in nitriding applications and yes some ammonia pricing has increased but not to a significant degree, at least for heat treaters. Recently several individuals have approached us asking if ammonia pricing was increasing which prompted “The Monty Heat Treat News” to look into it. It turns out that farmers are seeing enormous increases in fertilizer pricing because the cost of Anhydrous Ammonia has increased dramatically in a short period of time, however this is not the case with ammonia supplies being used by heat treaters.

Ammonia is sold as a liquid and evaporated into a gas and priced per pound. Normally heat treaters have a 1000 gallon tank or 2 1000 gallon tanks and the current price is roughly $.85 USD per pound. We checked with the major supplier in the industry “Tanner Industries” and their response was that there have been some modest increases recently but just that-modest which leads us to believe that the granular ammonia used in fertilizer is different than the liquid ammonia used by heat treaters. So that is our April Fools day joke which proved to be a learning curve for the team at “The Monty Heat Treat News”.  

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