A CropLife Exclusive: SUL4R-PLUS and HELM Discuss New Plant, Partnership
May 2, 2025 
With its new plant in Marissa, Il, now up and running – and the partnership with HELM in full force – SUL4R-PLUS is beginning to plan for the future.
In late April, SUL4R-PLUS formally unveiled its new production facility in Marissa, IL, to the marketplace. And according to Terry Gill, President/CEO, this opening represented another in a long line of steps the company is taking to cater to agriculture.
“We are really excited about this new plant addition in Marissa,” Gill told CropLife. “We have been, since 2022, facing a demand cycle for our products that has easily outstripped our capacity at our current facility in Louisville, KY. That plant had been producing around 60,000 tons of SUL4R-PLUS. This new location will allow us to produce up to 100,000 tons per year.”
According to Gill, SUL4R-PLUS made the decision to invest in a new facility during the 2024 growing season, as demand for its products steadily increased. SUL4R-PLUS is a patented, dust-free, low-salt, calcium-sulfate fertilizer manufactured from by-products from coal-fired power plants called synthetic gypsum. The fertilizer is a slow-release, granular product that can be the primary source of secondary nutrients for growers in crops such as soybeans, corn, small grains, and alfalfa.
After scouting for a location for its plant, SUL4R-PLUS ultimately decided the former Quad County Ready Mix concrete plant near Marissa made the most sense. “There were two reasons for this decision,” says Gill. “One, this site is near the Prairie State Power Generation Co, one of the new coal-fired power plants in the country and a source for the synthetic gypsum we needed to make our product. “Second, we are seeing a lot of demand for our products from the Pacific Northwest and in Western Canada – and having a plant in Southern Illinois with easy access to a rail spur gives us the chance to better supply these places.”
Of course, one of the other key considerations for SUL4R-PLUS building a second production facility was its partnership with HELM Crop Solutions.
“We really wanted a partner on the logistics side, and we spent the better part of a year looking at the market for such a company. Ultimately, we determined that Helm was the perfect partner, primarily because their distribution network was a perfect overlay with ours and the fact that we are both family-held organizations.”
According to Tim Eyrich, Vice President of Innovation and Agronomy at HELM, there were a few other important reasons a partnership between the two companies made sense.
“At HELM, we were looking for unique fertilizers that a strong agronomic message and perform well – both of which SUL4R-PLUS does,” says Eyrich. “Plus, this is a unique formula of calcium and sulfur. And sulfur is the No. 1 nutrient for plants to have to help manage heat stress and add nitrogen use efficiency.”
With its new Marissa plant now up and running – and the partnership with HELM in full force – SUL4R-PLUS is beginning to plan for the future. According to Gill, the company will formally introduce a new version of its flagship product later this year that combines boron and zinc. Furthermore, the Marissa plant was scaled in such a way that SUL4R-PLUS can easily expand its production capacity to 300,000 tons per year if needed.
“And it’s possible we might end up adding a third production facility in the not-too-distant future,” he says. “As demand for our product picks up in the Pacific Northwest and in Western Canada, it will probably make sense to build a new plant closer to this region.”
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