φ meson production cross section as a function of √s for 1.5 < pT < 5 GeV/c and 2.5 < y < 4, compared with EPOS 3 [8–10], PHOJET [6, 7] and the Monash 2013 tune of PYTHIA 8.1 [1]. The boxes represent the systematic uncertainties, the error bars the statistical uncertainties.