Cargill shifts grain, crop assets in Ontario
The Minnesota-headquartered agro-giant announced that it reached an agreement with La Coop fédérée regarding several grain and crop inputs assets in Ontario. The sale also is set to include Cargill’s percent share in the feed and food grain managing South West Ag Partners.
The sale of the facilities and retail sites, however, is not expected to reduce Cargill’s presence across Canada and the company will continue to have a footprint in Ontario with animal nutrition and beef and chicken processing sites, said a company spokesperson.
“Cargill continues to maintain and operate its export terminal in Sarnia, and continues to operate as a wholesaler in the Ontario market through AgResource, its crop inputs wholesale business.
“We plan to have an increased focus on building our origination and growing our handling of grain at the Sarnia terminal, along with significant growth through our existing locations in Canada,” she told FeedNavigator. “Selling the grain and crop inputs retail assets in Ontario allows us to strengthen our value proposition by investing in the portfolio of solutions we offer to growers throughout the country, and to focus on growing Sarnia to handle even more grain to export to areas of deficit worldwide.”
“In fact, we have committed to improvements at 11 of our crop inputs facilities in Western Canada to take place over the coming year for a total investment of $7m,” she said.
Cargill also is involved with $15m improvement project at its feed and food grain facility in Oakner, Manitoba.
“This sale is an indicator of our commitment to growers in Canada where we continue to maintain the operation of 40 crop inputs retail locations, 26 elevator assets, five export terminals, and two oilseed processing facilities throughout the country,” she said.
Assets sold
The decision to sell the facilities and crop input assets came out of an evaluation conducted of Cargill’s components, said the spokesperson.
“After an in-depth evaluation of our grain assets and crop inputs retail assets in Ontario, we concluded that a sale of those assets was the best path forward to remain competitive and focus on our growth strategy,” she said.
The sale includes five feed and food grain facilities along with several crop inputs retail locations.
Cargill also will be relinquishing a 50% share in South West Ag Partners, the company said. That joint venture covered nine facilities for grains and crop inputs in Ontario.
However, the sale did not include Cargill’s export terminal in Sarnia, which it is expanding, the company said. The sale also excludes any other Cargill business in Ontario, and all other grain facilities outside of Ontario.
The deal is subject to the normal regulatory evaluation.
