By CHRISTOPHER DONVILLE and MATT CRAZE

Israel Chemicals, looking to expand abroad as it faces rising taxes at home, said buying part or all of Chile’s largest fertilizer company would make a “good fit.”

Soc. Quimica & Minera de Chile SA, currently the subject of a tax and campaign-funding investigation, produces chemicals including potassium for crop nutrients. It’s also the world’s largest supplier of lithium, which is used in rechargeable batteries, and has a market capitalization of $5.72 billion.

“This is big for us to swallow, but I’m sure we would look at it,” Israel Chemicals CEO Stefan Borgas said Thursday in a telephone interview.

Opportunities outside Israel have become more attractive for the company recently as domestic problems pile up. A windfall tax on resources companies is due to come into effect in 2017 while Israel Chemicals has failed to win approval for a phosphate mine in Israel because of environmental concerns.

The company has also clashed with unionized employees amid job cuts as it tries to eliminate $350 million of costs through 2016. Workers are on strike at an Israel Chemicals plant that extracts minerals from the Dead Sea. Borgas said he expects that protest to be resolved by the end of April.

Israel Chemicals, the country’s fourth-largest company by sales, is controlled by billionaire Idan Ofer and trades in Tel Aviv. The stock is almost unchanged this year, giving the company a market capitalization of 35.8 billion shekels ($8.83 billion).

The company started trading New York as well in September, a move that in the future may help it raise funds for acquisitions. It said in December it plans to invest as much as $500 million in a phosphate joint venture in China. It’s also putting funds into an Ethiopian potash mine.

The second-biggest shareholder in Israel Chemicals is Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, which in 2012 proposed buying the rest of the company, only to abandon the idea later on after Israeli politicians and workers objected.

Canada’s Potash Corp. is also a shareholder in SQM with a 32% stake. Shares of the Chilean company plunged 17% Wednesday in Santiago trading after Potash Corp. withdrew three directors from SQM’s board in protest at the handling of a tax probe.

Potash Corp. said Wednesday it has no plans to sell the shares. An external spokesperson for SQM didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

SQM’s American depositary receipts rose as much as 5% in New York, the biggest intraday gain in three months. They were up 3.4% at $18.48 as of 10:23 a.m. local time.

“SQM is a good quality company, at least in terms of their assets,” Borgas said. “We would be interested in this only if it would be some kind of an operational combination.”