The moment of inspiration came in 2012, when Professor Emeritus William Harrison, from Western Michigan University, invited Pagano Ted, then 35 -year -old independent geologist, to his geological deposit of 27,000 square feet in Kalamazoo. A paradise for rock fans, the robust warehouse shelves house mineral boxes from the entire state. But Pagano was there to see something specific: the 80 pallés of rock nuclei donated in 2008 by Mosaic Company, an important company specialized in potassa that lies in the New York Stock Exchange (11.1 billion dollars in sales in 2024). The nuclei are standardized rock cylinders, one meter long and four inches in diameter. These were recovered from about 75 perforated wells in the early 1980s at depths of 2,434 meters under the counties of Osceola and Moscota, a scarcely populated strip of the center of Michigan, in a layer of rock rich in minerals deposited by an ocean that was evaporated millions of years ago. These minerals include salt (sodium chloride) and potassa (mainly potassium oxide), which farmers appreciate as fertilizer. It is a crucial mineral: the United States uses 5.3 million tons per year and imports 95 %, mainly from Canada.
Pagano was excited about these nuclei because I expected them to confirm their intuition: that Mosaic had been settled on a potassa vanet in Michigan much greater than anyone imagined. He suspected that the site, if exploited properly, could provide a million tons of fertilizer a year to US farmers. That would be almost seven times the volume produced by the small mosaic plant of 150,000 tons per year in Hersey, Michigan. With an investment of $ 70,000 from his own pocket, Pagano had formed Michigan Potash & Salt Company and was already giving mineral rights to farmers and farmers in the area. Even so, he says Pagano: “I went to the nuclei laboratory with skepticism.”
Harrison and Pagano opened sealed plastic bags to extract rock wrapped in newspapers of 1984. The tests revealed thick deposits of some of the most purity potassa deposits ever discovered. They were especially excited when they opened the nuclei of a well called Stein 1-7. He had been drilled at miles from the area considered the optimal point, so Pagano thought that the probabilities that these nuclei show low potassa concentrations were high. Instead, they were equally good. This was proof that the real extension of Michigan’s potassa deposit was considerably greater than even experts like Harrison had expected. Pagano began to lease like crazy: he soon had a position that covered 15,500 acres (approximately 24 square miles) of what has proven to be one of the largest potassa deposits in the United States.
“I was sure that the Stein well would not have a good performance. Seeing that it was as good as the best well was amazing,” says Pagano, now 49 years. Its Michigan Potash is about to close a financing of 1.8 billion dollars for a new mine, which includes a 1.300 million dollars loan from the energy department and 500 million dollars in capital managed by JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. If everything goes well, the mine will produce 1 million tons per year of potassa (with a value of 350 million dollars) and 1.3 million tons of salt (with a value of 80 million dollars) by the end of the decade. With a proven resource base of 130 million tons, they could maintain that level for a century or more, and enrich pagan, owner of 65%. Even now, your participation is worth at least 300 million dollars.
Pagano grew in Greley, Colorado, son of a fiscal advisor and an assistant librarian. After graduating from Notre Dame in 1997, he obtained a master’s degree in oil engineering at Colorado Mining School. He began his career in the oil industry as a pawn in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and then worked as a geologist for the Bay Bay Native Corporation in Alaska. (It is of Aleutian ancestry, the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands). From there, he worked in Texaco, Chevron and Anadarko drilling bituminous shale oil wells in Colorado. In 2008, at 33, he undertook his own way, initially planning to lease oil deposits in the Bakken schist region, North Dakota, but the prices of the land – which reached thousands of dollars per acre with a groom of 20% and a period of five years – were too high. When observing other mineral trends in the north of the west, Pagano was fascinated with the potassa and baffled by the small mosaic operation in Hersey. Why hadn’t he expanded?
Despite having its headquarters in Florida, Mosaic extracts almost all its potassa in Saskatchewan and sells it through Canpotex (Canadian potassa exporters) through its 50% association with the Canadian giant of Nutrien fertilizers (sales in 2024: 26,000 million dollars). Canpotex, together with Belarusalki of Belarus and Uralki in Russia, make up an oligopoly that controls more than 70 % of the world supply.
After exhausting their own funds, Pagano raised 250,000 more friends and family in exchange for 13% of his company. Since then, the only external financing that Michigan Potash has received is a 50 million subsidy of the Michigan State Agriculture Department in 2023 and a new subsidy of 80 million of the USDA, crucial to obtain permits.
When Pagano initially contacted the United States Department of Energy to request financing in 2021, he received an indifferent response. Michigan Potash was a small and unproven company. But he and his team persisted, and in 2025, while the war in Ukraine extended, the Department of Energy (DOE) agreed a loan of 1.3 billion dollars to 15 years. However, this loan had conditions: Pagano had to raise 500 million dollars in capital and, to reduce the risk, Michigan Potash would outsternize the construction by means of a key to such a lock. “Now (the DOE) looks like a genius,” says Cory Christafferson, development director of Michigan Potash.
To extract potassa, Pagano will use a mining method in situ or by solution. Will pierce wells 2434 meters deep in pairs. One is the injection well, whereby Michigan Potash will send hot water to dissolve potash and salt in situ. The second is the production well; The solution amounts to this well to the processing plant for separation and drying. The water recovers, heats up and returns to the well. From the surface, the mine will be practically imperceptible and should be eligible for ecological tax credits. “There is not a hair in this project that we are ashamed,” says the director of Operations, Aric Glasser.
In total, Forbes estimates that costs should be around $ 140 per ton; Currently, Potassa is sold at about $ 350 per ton. The Mosaic world giant can produce potassa for less – about $ 80 per ton – but farmers in the west should still assume another $ 80 per ton for rail transport from Saskatchewan, 1930 kilometers away, in addition to any tariff that President Trump can impose (currently 10 % on Canadian potash). The adm agricultural giant has already agreed to buy almost all annual production of pagano.
Mosaic rejected pagan offers to buy part or the entire remaining plant in Hersey and, claiming high costs, closed its potassa operation in 2013. He sold the remaining salt processing operation to Cargill for 55 million dollars. “They thought they didn’t have to worry about the competition,” says Christafferson.
The invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin in February 2022 changed that perspective. The EU prohibited importation or even the transit of Russian and Belarus fertilizers. China prohibited potassa exports to preserve the supply to its domestic market. Prices shot at $ 1200 per ton. To control costs, neither President Biden nor Trump have prohibited or sanctioned imported Russian pota.
Each ton that pagan can supply at the national level should generate more potassa available outside the United States in international markets, including sub -Saharan Africa, whose farmers need urgent fertilizers. “A crisis is needed for people to stop being complacent,” says Pagano. And an intrepid opponent is needed to challenge an oligopoly.
How to play it
Por William Baldwin
What would happen if we stayed without potassium or phosphorus? It would be bad news for farmers and, by extension, for humanity. It is an element – two elements of the environmental disaster, postulated by the expert, although perhaps too pessimistic, Jeremy Grantham fund manager. If you share your pessimism, it would make sense to acquire a participation in a potassa and phosphate producer. Two of the greats are Nutrien and Mosaic, which are quoted in the New York Stock Exchange and offer higher yields to those of the market. Its prices are, respectively, 23 and 19 times higher than the profits that Value Line foresees for this year.
William Baldwin is a columnist for Forbes investment strategies.
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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