One of the world’s largest potash producers, Uralkali, has signed a US$450mn loan agreement with five international banks.

The self-arranged club deal was initiated in February 2014 and is the company’s debut club unsecured facility.

The mandated lead arrangers of the five-year facility are Commerzbank, which are acting as the facility agent, ING, Nordea Bank, which will be the documentation agent, SG Group (represented by Rosbank and hedging agent Société Générale) and UniCredit Bank, acting as the passport bank.

The loan is priced at 175 basis points over Libor. It will be used to refinance Uralkali’s existing loans.

Viktor Belyakov, Uralkali CFO, says: “The new self-arranged unsecured credit facility demonstrates the availability of international funding to top-tier Russian borrowers. Although Uralkali is not planning to increase its debt, we continue developing relationship with foreign financial institutions in order to obtain funding on favourable terms. The funds raised under the committed credit line will enable us to refinance a part of our existing facilities, decrease our financing costs and increase the share of unsecured financing in our loan portfolio.”