Federal regulators have cleared the road for Viterra to complete its takeover of southern Alberta’s farmer-owned Lethbridge Inland Terminal.
Regina-based Viterra, the Canadian grain handling arm of Swiss commodity giant Glencore Xstrata, announced Friday it has now picked up “all pertinent shareholder and regulatory approvals” to buy LIT for an undisclosed sum.
LIT, which operates on Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) track southeast of Lethbridge, was built for about $23 million and opened in 2008, on nine acres of a 220-acre property where it was meant to be the anchor resident of an agricultural industrial park development.
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Before the Viterra deal closed, LIT’s ownership group included about 200 farming shareholders across southern Alberta, including various sizes of grain operations, Hutterite colonies and First Nations.
The facility, listed by the Canadian Grain Commission at 41,190 tonnes of handling capacity, would become Viterra’s largest Alberta elevator.
A Viterra spokesman wasn’t immediately available Wednesday to discuss the future of the fertilizer blending plant at the LIT site, which the terminal company has operated since 2010 in a joint venture with United Farmers of Alberta (UFA). –– AGCanada.com Network
