A southern California pulse packer’s unfinished facility in North Dakota will be a Regina pulse trading and processing firm’s latest entry in the U.S. market.
Alliance Grain Traders on Thursday announced it has bought property, storage facilities and equipment at Minot, N.D. from C+F Foods — a Los Angeles-area firm packing, distributing and exporting dried beans, peas, rice and popcorn — and its investment partners.
AGT, whose U.S. subsidiary United Pulse Trading will operate the facility, said it has committed C$12 million to buy and build out the Minot plant for expected completion in August 2012.
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AGT’s planned build-out is to include additional pulse processing equipment to handle beans, chickpeas, peas and lentils, to "augment" the company’s existing capacity at Williston, N.D., about 200 km west of Minot or 300 km south of Regina.
The facility will also add "additional capacity for value-added pulses production of food ingredient pulses flours, proteins, starches and fibres," the Regina company said.
The facility was originally set up as a pulse processing facility but was "never completed or commissioned" by its previous owners, AGT said. Its processing and handling equipment are in "ready for installation" condition.
"The fact that the building is already built, the storage is constructed and the equipment is ready for installation gives us a timing advantage and means it will be ready for the 2012 harvest season," AGT CEO Murad Al-Katib said in the company’s release.
When its construction began in 2007, the plant was owned by MG Grain, an Egyptian company making its move into U.S. pulse crop territory. C+F Foods had bought the unfinished plant in 2008, following the death of MG Grain’s founder Milad Ghattas.
Once commissioned, the Minot plant is expected to provide origination reach into central and eastern North Dakota, which AGT said offers "substantial acreage of beans, peas and pulses."
The site also offers transportation advantages for export and domestic shipments, AGT said, as inbound containers become available after carrying in equipment for the state’s oil and gas sector.
C+F had intended the MG Grain facility to serve as its "origination plant" for peas, lentils and dry beans and to allow the company to "maintain control of storage and shipment of our grains."
"Stable supply"
"As with our other recent announcements, this facility is all about firming up our North American capacity and moving up the value chain with a focus on pulse ingredients and beans for the food sector," AGT’s Al-Katib said.
North Dakota growers are "responding to market opportunities and are growing more pulses in the region," he said, and "we expect the increase in pulse acres in the Northern Plains region to continue."
"North American and European food firms are interested in a "larger-scale, stable supply of pulse ingredients as they like their profile as non-genetically modified, gluten-free protein, fibre and starch," board chairman Huseyin Arslan added.
"This acquisition we feel will further assist our company in capitalizing on this new area of business while giving us a U.S. plant for our dry edible bean platform."
The building is sited in Minot’s Value-Added Agricultural Complex, an 800-acre industrial development connected to the Port of North Dakota, Minot’s intermodal transportation hub, with access to Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) track.
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Regina to host new pulse, durum processing plant, Oct. 8, 2011
