POTASH INDUSTRY

Potash, a potassium or potassium compound, is used in industry and as a component of agricultural fertilizer.

In 1861 Adolph Frank, a German Jew, discovered the benefits of potash, and his work helped create the potash industry. In 1902 Theodor Herzl's utopian work, Altneuland, envisioned a modern industry based on the chemical compounds in the Dead Sea. Moshe Novomeysky (1873–1961), a mining engineer and Zionist who immigrated to Palestine from Siberia in 1920, devised a plan to extract the Dead Sea's chemical compounds for industrial use, and approached the British government for concessionary rights. Following ten years of negotiation, he established the Palestine Potash Company, which became a major enterprise in the Middle East. The first plant was established on the northwestern shore of the sea in 1931. In 1937 a second plant was established on the southwestern shore, near Sodom. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946) noted the Palestine Potash Works as a positive point of contact between the Arab and Jewish economies.

Much of the company was destroyed during the Arab–Israel War of 1948. Only the southwestern plant remained and, after the establishment of the State of Israel, became a government-controlled company. But production did not resume until 1954, when the road from Beersheba to Sodom was completed. Since then the company, privatized under the name Dead Sea Works Ltd., and its output have grown significantly. By 2000 Dead Sea Works was one of the world's largest producers of potash, producing almost 10 percent of the global output.

During the 1980s Jordan developed its own potash industry with technical and financial assistance from a variety of countries. But by the turn of the century sales were declining, with the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company reporting a loss of $40 million for the year 2000.

Bibliography

Novomeysky, Moses A. Given to Salt: The Struggle for the Dead Sea Concession. London: Parrish, 1958.

Novomeysky, Moses A. My Siberian Life. London: Parrish, 1956.

chaim i. waxman