It remains to be seen whether the sale of Irish Fertiliser Industries (IFI) will go ahead as planned. The two shareholders - the Government and ICI - have put the company on the market and have received two bids, one from Declan Ganly's Grand Portage and the other from a consortium including IAWS and Finnish giant, Kemira.

However, neither are believed to be offering the kind of price which the shareholders - and particularly ICI - want. The scale of the bids is not known, but they appear to fall short of the £50 million plus (€63.5 million) which had been speculated when the company was first put on the block.

IFI recorded losses of £10.6 million last year, suffering from the cyclical downturn in the sector. But, far from easing, conditions in the industry have got even worse since the sale was announced, with low-cost imports from Russia and elsewhere flooding the European market.

For this reason, the two bidders may have hoped to pick IFI up reasonably cheaply. While negotiations are still believed to be continuing, it is quite possible that the two shareholders will now put the sale on ice and hope to do better when, and if, the industry moves into a more prosperous phase.