Mosaic to lay off 199 at idled Florida phosphate mine

Mosaic plans to lay off 199 workers at its South Fort Meade phosphate operation on the Polk-Hardee county line in Florida, effective Dec. 8, after deciding to idle the site because it cannot obtain sulfur at economically viable prices. The cut takes almost everyone who works there, and the company has told the state it expects the operation to stay idle for more than six months.

The figures come from a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter signed by Ron Yasurek, Mosaic's vice president of phosphate operations for North America, dated Oct. 5 and logged by FloridaCommerce on Oct. 14, according to WFLA, Patch and WhatNow, which reported on the notice. WFLA put the site's workforce at 206, citing a company fact sheet; Mosaic has elsewhere listed about 250 employees at South Fort Meade, The Herald-Advocate reported. Yasurek wrote that the goal remains a restart, but "as of right now, we believe this idle will exceed six months."

Mosaic is treating the layoff as a pause rather than an exit. A small group of employees will stay on to keep the site in environmental compliance and ready to restart, and the company was still deciding which positions to keep, according to the notice. Hourly workers are represented by Local 814C of the International Chemical Workers Union Council, part of the United Food and Commercial Workers, and their contract includes bumping rights that could let affected workers move into other positions.

Sulfur is what converts mined phosphate rock into the material used to make fertilizer, and its price has left the range the business was built on. Mosaic says the prevailing U.S. price was about $280 a tonne before the latest disruptions, roughly $500 at the start of 2026, and has exceeded $1,000 a tonne globally since the Middle East conflict began, The Herald-Advocate reported. In a Sept. 9 letter to President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, eight Florida members of Congress, including Rep. Scott Franklin, whose district includes Hardee County, put the Tampa-area price at roughly $1,100 to $1,200 per long ton, against a 10-year average of $172. "American fertilizer workers and farmers cannot wait for market conditions to normalize on their own," they wrote.

The squeeze runs well beyond the Persian Gulf. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz is blocking nearly a quarter of global sulfur production, The Economist reported, with exports from the region reportedly two-thirds below pre-war levels and non-Gulf exports still 40% below despite more shipments from the U.S. and Canada. Ukrainian strikes have damaged major Russian refineries, and other producing countries have tightened exports, according to WFLA. The United States gets most of its sulfur at home as a byproduct of oil and gas processing and imported 28% of what it consumed in 2024, mostly from Canada, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Mosaic's own statement on the idling cited the availability and affordability of "domestic sulfur."

South Fort Meade is the latest step in a phosphate pullback that began in the spring. Mosaic implemented a partial phosphate curtailment in May and added more at the start of July, it said with second-quarter results on Aug. 4, when it reported a $273 million net loss and a $104 million operating loss in its phosphate segment. By August its plants in the U.S. and Brazil were cutting capacity, Argus reported. A company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission warned that in the third quarter "we are taking and may continue to take steps to temporarily curtail additional production at our phosphate production facilities in North America and Brazil."

Those steps have now reached several sites. Mosaic has reduced output at its Bartow, New Wales and South Pierce fertilizer plants in Florida and has idled or curtailed its Uncle Sam and Faustina facilities in Louisiana, The Herald-Advocate reported. A WARN Index listing shows a separate Mosaic notice filed Aug. 26 covering 206 workers in Convent, in St. James Parish, La. Idling a mine fits that sequence: with the plants that process rock into fertilizer running below capacity, there is less call for the rock itself, though Mosaic has tied the South Fort Meade decision only to sulfur.

The local labor market was already thin on Mosaic jobs. The company's nearby South Pasture site has been idle since 2018, and Mosaic says about 300 people work at South Fort Meade and South Pasture combined, according to The Herald-Advocate. The unions representing workers at Mosaic facilities across Polk County have at least 2,000 members, The Ledger reported. Mosaic, based in Tampa, employs more than 13,000 people in six countries.

The idling arrives while Mosaic is trying to lengthen South Fort Meade's life. The company is seeking permits to mine portions of about 1,966 additional acres south of State Road 64 in Hardee County, ore that would run through the existing beneficiation plant and, according to federal permitting documents, sustain historical production rates for about four more years. Mosaic said it will "continue to evaluate opportunities to safely resume full operations when market conditions allow."