Bunge’s 2024 profit fell short of expectations after weak oilseed processing margins slashed fourth-quarter earnings in its core agribusiness segment.

The company said processing would remain under pressure in 2025 due to weak margins and a challenging economic environment, with global trade tensions and biofuel policy uncertainty creating headwinds for crop traders.

“We definitely are in an environment that has less visibility than the normal with the trade disruptions, some of the uncertainty around U.S. biofuels,” said CEO Greg Heckman.

Bunge shares were down 5.2 per cent midmorning.

The struggles come as Bunge is working to close a deal to acquire grain handler Viterra, a merger that would create an agribusiness powerhouse closer in size to peers Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill. Bunge said regulatory approvals for the deal were in the late stages.

The company has seen profits erode as a global glut of staple crops like soybeans and corn dragged prices to four-year lows last year, whittling down margins.

ADM on Tuesday posted its lowest fourth-quarter profit in six years and said it was slashing costs and cutting jobs, joining Cargill in tightening its belt.

Bunge’s agribusiness segment, its largest, saw adjusted profit fall 43 per cednt, with processing sub-segment profit down nearly 60 per cent from a year earlier on lower oilseed crushing results in North and South America and Europe.

Refined and specialty oils unit’s adjusted profit dropped 25 per cent due in part to U.S. biofuel policy uncertainty.

Bunge forecast adjusted earnings of $7.75 per share in 2025, down from $9.19 per share in 2024 and missing analysts’ expectations of $8.71. The 2025 guidance did not include its pending Viterra acquisition.

Adjusted fourth-quarter profit fell to $2.13 per share from $3.70 a year earlier, below the consensus analyst estimates of $2.24, according to data compiled by LSEG.

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A May 7 news release on the GFI website says the company cannot service its outstanding debts.

“The wind-down is a result of recent macro-economic events, which have caused GFI to experience challenges in purchasing adequate supplies of raw material inputs for its processing assets, which has resulted, and is expected to continue to, result in a material decline in the company’s sales and gross profit until new raw material supply becomes available from the fall 2024 Canadian harvest,” the release says.

“Management and the board of directors have determined that these challenges will make it near impossible for (GFI) to continue to operate and service its debts, leaving no other option than to wind down its operations.”

Less than a year ago, in June 2023, Corporate Knights named GFI one of the Future 50 Fastest Growing Sustainable Companies in Canada.

“GFI’s selection for this prestigious list is a testament to its commitment to supplying premium, sustainable plant-based protein food and ingredients,” said a GFI announcement about the Fastest Growing award.

“The company’s mission centres around providing healthy and sustainably produced plant-based food and ingredients, utilizing regenerative crops that enrich the soil and employing local processing methods with minimal emissions and water usage.”

GFI has headquarters in Toronto and has several facilities in Saskatchewan, including elevators in Zealandia and Lajord. It purchased peas, lentils, chickpeas and other high protein crops from farmers.

In a financial statement released in February, GFI says it has four lines of business — Core Ingredients, Value-Added Ingredients, Plant-Based Pet Food Ingredients and Downstream Products — and ships to 37 countries around the world.

While operating, GFI manufactured pea and lentil flours, pea protein, pasta made from lentils and its own brand of pulse-rich pet food.

From April 1 to December 31, 2023, GFI had revenues of $76.1 million, a decline of 18 per cent from the same period in 2022.

A May 8 company news release said GFI has received letters from its secured lenders demanding immediate and full payment of the “outstanding debt balances of $14,987,992 and $6,844,973.”

Another GFI release from early May said: “The company will be working with its lenders to sell its assets in an orderly fashion,”.

This story will be updated when more information is available.

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“The danger here might be that the sector might not live up to its potential,” said Nicholas Renzetti, research associate with Smart Property Institute, the group that wrote the report in partnership with the Future Skills Centre.

And that potential is enormous. Protein Industries Canada believes the plant-based protein sector could be contributing $25 billion annually to Canada’s gross domestic product by 2035.

“Manitoba alone wants to grow its protein sector by attracting $1.5 billion in investment and creating 1,550 jobs by 2025,” stated the report.

Major investments have already been made in the two prairie provinces.

Roquette opened the world’s largest pea processing plant in Portage la Prairie, Man., in 2021.

Cargill and Viterra have announced plans to build canola crushing facilities in Regina that will be operational by 2024.

Federated Co-operatives Ltd. and AGT Food and Ingredients are building a $2 billion canola crushing and biodiesel plant in the same city that will be completed by 2027.

Burcon NutraScience Corporation’s pilot protein ingredient plant in Winnipeg received funding in 2023.

But a survey of companies working in that space revealed that there are some significant hurdles to overcome for those plants to be successful.

“People are concerned that the persistent labour challenges might lead to a situation where the sector continues along but doesn’t expand to its full potential,” said Renzetti.

The case of Merit Functional Foods offers a cautionary tale along those lines, according to the report.

There were “sky-high expectations” when the company opened its 94,000 sq. foot processing plant in Winnipeg in 2021.

Two years later the firm declared bankruptcy despite receiving $116.5 million in federal and provincial funding.

“The company’s lack of success was attributed to factors ranging from the high costs of inputs to labour shortages to delays in new product development,” stated the report.

A survey by the Canadian Federation for Independent Businesses found that 63 percent of agri-food companies could not hire all the staff they needed.

“There is a lack of visibility and perceived attractiveness for food and beverage manufacturing careers,” stated the report.

Renzetti said that is odd given that it is the largest manufacturing sector in the country measured by employment and the second largest measured by sales.

It doesn’t help that wages paid in the food manufacturing sector are typically much lower than in competing sectors such as potash mining and oil and gas extraction.

Average pay in the food manufacturing sector was $21.20 per hour in 2020 compared to an average manufacturing wage of $30.36 per hour.

Another hurdle is that many food production facilities are in rural areas, which means there is a smaller talent pool to draw on and it is harder to convince newcomers to Canada to settle in those areas.

“We do think these are solvable challenges,” said Renzetti.

The first step is to create increased awareness of food manufacturing jobs starting at the educational institutes.

People training in information technology, engineering and data analysis might not be aware of these jobs.

One idea is to work with institutes to create job internships or to get them teaching specific technical skills unique to food manufacturing jobs.

Food manufacturers need to make better use of existing immigration programs, such as the Provincial Nominee Program, which he called a “standout” program.

The industry should also lobby hard to get plant-based protein manufacturing on the list of eligible industries for the federal Agri-Food Pilot program.

There needs to be better co-ordination and sharing of labour market data between provinces and with the federal government.

And there should be a wholistic approach to job creation that places an emphasis on quality-of-life aspects, such as providing adequate transportation, housing and child-care facilities to accompany the new job.

—Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer from Saskatchewan.

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Agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay was in Ingleside, Ont., at the Lactalis Canada cheese plant to make the Feb. 5 announcement. The projects are through the six-year, $397.5-million Supply Management Processing Investment Fund, which is part of Ottawa’s commitment to help sectors that lost market share due to trade agreements.

The funding is available to dairy, egg and poultry processors to buy and install automated equipment and technology so they can boost capacity and be more productive. Examples include milk pasteurizers, ultrafiltration systems, robotics for packaging systems and new machines to grade, set and break eggs. The projects also address environmental challenges and labour shortages.

Lactalis will receive more than $3.4 million for automated cheese processing and packaging equipment. The government said the upgrades will help modernize the plant, reduce waste and improve productivity and the company has already invested $11 million in the project.

The fund provides non-repayable investments that support up to 50 percent of eligible project costs for small and medium-sized processors and up to 25 percent for large companies with 500 employees or more.

While much of the investment is in the East where supply managed industries are more common, several western Canadian companies are also receiving money.

In Alberta, Crystal Springs Cheese at Coal Hurst will get $544,100 to install a two-phase milk ultrafiltration system. Jenner Colony Farming Co. in Jenner will get $43,600 to upgrade its refrigeration system and install new processing equipment in its poultry operation.

Sun works Farm at Armenia will automate poultry slaughtering, cutting and deboning with a $160,000 investment, and Tiras Dairies from Camrose will get $121,900 for an automated yogurt line.

Several large investments in British Columbia of $5 million each will see Golden Valley Foods in Abbotsford install a fully automatic egg grading system, Punjab Milk Foods in Surrey install an automated state-of-the-art processing line for its paneer cheese and Vitalus Nutrition of Abbotsford put in an automated powder handling and packaging system in its dairy processing facility.

Ridgecrest Dairies at Mission will use its $227,600 to install a walk-in cooler extension and new automated processing equipment such as a cheese press, cutter and vacuum packaging, while Rossdown Natural Foods at Abbotsford will get $1.5 million for automated poultry processing equipment.

In Saskatchewan, Star Egg in Saskatoon is set to receive $5 million to modernize and automate packaging and install new equipment for in-house egg processing.

Processor associations welcomed the announcements.

Mathieu Frigon, president of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada, said the fund is valuable because it leverages increased investments.

Similarly, Mark Hubert, president of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, said numerous processors have been able to make important investments.

“New investments in equipment and technology will facilitate companies’ efforts to increase productivity and efficiency and enable Canadian poultry and egg processors to undertake valuable and leading-edge modernization projects,” he said.

MacAulay said he will always stand up for Canada’s supply management system.

“With this funding, dairy, poultry and egg processors will be able to modernize their operations so they can continue providing Canadians families with high-quality products while supporting small, rural communities across the country,” he said in a news release.

—Karen Briere writes for the Western Producer from Saskatchewan.

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Olymel, the meat packing arm of Quebec’s Sollio Cooperative, announced Wednesday it will permanently close its pork boning and packaging plant at Princeville, Que. effective Nov. 10, and its poultry processing plant at Paris, Ont. effective Dec. 22, affecting 301 and 93 jobs respectively.

One of two production lines from the Paris plant will be installed at the company’s processing plant at Oakville, Ont., about 75 km northeast of Paris, as part of an $8 million package of upgrades. Equipment from the Paris site will also be moved to an Olymel further processing plant at Sainte-Rosalie, Que., just east of Saint-Hyacinthe.

“The decision to close the Paris plant definitively was much thought-over, and the choice to consolidate the Paris operations with those in Oakville was taken to ensure efficiency and cost savings,” Olymel CEO Yannick Gervais said in a release Wednesday.

“This decision will prevent the projected costly investments needed to update the company’s equipment at the Paris plant, notably to eliminate noise and odour disturbances for the neighbourhood.”

The renovations at Oakville, meanwhile, are expected to add 62 processing jobs at that plant, Olymel said in a release. Employees from the Paris plant will be offered relocation to Oakville or to other Olymel poultry plants at Port Colborne and Brampton, Ont.

Further-processing work such as tumbling at the company’s Orenda Road plant at Brampton are also expected to get a boost from the upgrades at Oakville, Olymel said.

Olymel has owned the Paris, Oakville and Port Colborne plants since 2018, when it bought Ontario chicken processor Pinty’s Delicious Foods.

‘Rethink’

As for the Princeville closure, Gervais said the company had “explored various avenues” for the pork processing facility but found its operations could be handled instead at Olymel’s other pork slaughter, cutting and boning plants in Quebec, namely at St-Esprit, Yamachiche and Ange-Gardien.

A relocation plan will also be offered to the Princeville plant’s employees to shift to other fresh pork plants or “any other facility with labour needs.” The closure also affects 33 temporary foreign workers (TFWs), Olymel said, adding it plans to work with federal and provincial authorities to allow those workers to apply to relocate to other Olymel sites.

The site at Princeville, about 80 km east of Trois-Rivieres, had already been shifted from hog slaughter and cutting work to value-added processing in March last year. Olymel said Wednesday it will announce plans for disposition of that plant and land at “a later date.”

“Today more than ever, it is necessary to continue to rethink our organization in order to optimize all of our activities,” Gervais said of the Princeville closure in a separate release. “The fresh pork industry is slowly getting back on track after two years of tumult that forced us to reorganize our operations.”

The “difficult but necessary” decision to shut the Princeville plant “is part of Olymel’s desire to continue our efforts to return to profitability in the sector, for the benefit of our entire organization,” he said.

Olymel’s processing business at Princeville had also previously included a bacon facility, which burned down in 2012 and was not rebuilt.

Throughput

Olymel also said Wednesday it’s “accelerating” plans by over a year to close a distribution centre it operates at Saint-Simon, Que., about 12 km north of Sainte-Rosalie. That closure will now take effect Jan. 26, 2024.

The company said it announced in September last year it will sell its building and land at Saint-Simon to the municipality, which plans to redevelop the site for residential use.

The decision to reschedule the closure follows Olymel’s recent reductions in slaughter volumes, which led to a “decline” in throughput at the Saint-Simon site, and also considers the capacity of other Olymel distribution centres to handle those volumes.

In Sollio’s fiscal 2022, the Olymel division alone booked a loss, before income taxes, of $445.7 million for 2022, following a $71.8 million loss for 2021.

Olymel has already been in deep cost-cutting mode for about a year, including eliminating dozens of administrative and management positions last fall through attrition and layoffs and permanently closing three Quebec processing plants.

After announcing plans to reduce its total hog slaughter, Olymel said in April it will close its Vallee-Jonction, Que. slaughter plant by Dec. 22.

In May, Olymel said it will also dial back its company-owned sow herd in Western Canada, with plans to idle five sow units in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan.

That’s expected to translate to a production cut of about 200,000 market hogs per year. The resulting impact on operations at Olymel’s Red Deer, Alta. slaughter plant “will not be felt until 2024 at the earliest,” it said at the time. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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A new report — dubbed a “landmark study” by the Potato Growers of Alberta — revealed the sector drove a total contribution of $2.87 billion to Canada’s economy in 2022.

It also notes the nationwide creation of 9,390 full-time-equivalent jobs, $662 million in employment income, a $1.3 billion contribution to GDP and $87 million in tax revenue to federal and provincial governments.

“We know that our industry has grown a lot in recent years but we had no accurate assessment of its overall impact on our economy,” said James Bareman, chair of the Potato Growers, in a webinar Tuesday.

“The industry could not have grown to this scale without the goodwill and collaboration of all parties involved: growers, processors, packers, the service sector, the scientific community and governments.”

The Alberta Potato Industry – Growing Success in 2022 was completed by Serecon and Nichols Applied Management — both Edmonton-based consultants with experience in developing economic impact assessments in the ag sphere.

The firms used world-standard industry methodology — further scrutinized and approved by an independent third-party university economist — to conduct the study.

“We wanted to ensure the study was accurate and the methodology was beyond reproach,” Potato Growers executive director Terence Hochstein wrote in a release.

“That’s why we went to great lengths to ensure it was conducted in a manner that would pass rigorous external scrutiny.”

Alberta is home to two broad regions of potato growers, Darren Haarsma of Serecon said: seed and table potatoes north of Calgary and processed potato products (chips, hash browns, et cetera) in the south.

Both subsectors are doing well, he said.

“Since 2017, there’s been marked increase in acres in Alberta across all types of production,” said Haarsma.

“A noteworthy point about the Alberta industry that makes it unique in comparison to other provinces is that the average production — thanks in large part to the extensive irrigation in Alberta — is about 30 per cent higher than the rest of Canada’s average.”

— Jeff Melchior is a reporter for Alberta Farmer in Edmonton.

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Tyson Foods reported its first quarterly loss since 2009; HyLife’s processing plant in Windom, Minn., declared bankruptcy; Smithfield Foods is closing 40 sow farms in Missouri; Olymel announced the permanent closure of its Vallée-Jonction hog plant in Quebec; and despite rising sales, Maple Leaf Foods reported a loss in the first quarter of 2023.

“Everybody’s feeling the pinch, and these sorts of restructurings are a function of the economic challenges that we have right now,” says Paul Marchand, senior risk management analyst with H@ms Marketing.

Marchand singled out HyLife’s Windom plant closure as an example.

“It was purely market conditions that drove that decision,” he says. “It talked about an inflationary environment, a high-cost environment, and just difficult global economic challenges to navigate.

“The plant was losing $6 million a month, according to their bankruptcy filings. This is all a function of the economic conditions that we’re in.”

Marchand says those conditions developed as a result of policy decisions made during the pandemic.

“You can’t disrupt supply chains by asking everybody to restrict their movement. That’s going to create challenges,” he says. “And then you pump a bunch of money into the economy on both sides of the border because you’ve asked people to stay home.”

He doesn’t label that as right or wrong in terms of health policy.

“I’m not going to get into that, but it was economically very disruptive,” he says. “We are feeling the fallout of those decisions that were made in 2020, and we’ll continue to do so until we see a new normal develop.”

Marchand says that new normal won’t be realized until the effects of this inflationary, high interest rate environment are settled, but the timing of that is hard to predict.

“There is a policy lag with any of these decisions so we’re just waiting (for) the impacts of the policy to kind of catch up,” he says. “The good news is, we’ve seen a slowdown in demand and a turnaround in inflation rates. While I don’t think that we see an interest rate rise for the remainder of the year, they almost certainly are not going to cut.”

Current times signal a market correction, he says. The excess money supply caused an inflationary bump and extra dollars in circulation increased demand for higher-cost proteins, which drove up all meat prices.

Then the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to bring inflation under control. Companies that were over-leveraged are now feeling the pinch with higher debt-servicing costs. For the same reasons, consumers had to tighten their belts so their taste for high-priced proteins diminished.

“It’s not like you can say, ‘I don’t feel like paying my line of credit today’,” says Marchand. “But I can very easily buy ground pork instead of a loin or ground beef instead of a steak.”

The pork sector is being hit hardest by these market forces. When Maple Leaf reported its first-quarter loss, it blamed “pork market headwinds” in addition to inflationary pressures.

READ MORE: Olymel to idle multiple Prairie hog barns

When demand for pork rose in 2021, the industry began producing more pigs. Now that consumers are cutting back, there’s an oversupply.

“As prices go up, sometimes producers start to increase production, perhaps a little too early,” said Stephen Heckbert, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council. “Sometimes we outpace market demand with production. And that’s the cycle we’re in at this moment.”

But Heckbert says the situation is largely self-correcting.

“There’s no perfect world where we can match the market exactly. We’re invariably either too high or too low. When we’re too low, prices go up.”

Heckbert is encouraged by recent developments in overseas markets, where roughly half of Canadian pork goes.

“We’re back in China now. The Philippines is a growing market for us now. As more people enter the middle class, pork consumption is going to grow.”

The price of hogs is determined by the U.S. domestic market, the destination for only 20 per cent of Canadian pork. So, while demand for Canadian pork in overseas markets has a negligible effect on the price producers get for hogs, it does ensure there are markets for Canadian pork when the U.S. market is oversaturated.

The beef sector has been somewhat insulated from economic pressures because producers reduced herd sizes in the face of high feed prices after several years of drought. Demand has never caught up. Now, with consumer spending choked by high interest rates and rising prices, demand will inevitably fall.

“Inflationary pressures have been a challenge for the last couple years from the input side of things in the beef space,” says Manitoba Beef Producers general manager Carson Callum, adding there is still a strong outlook for cattle prices.

“Obviously there are market headwinds that continue to be at play, and producers are monitoring those.”

He recommends that producers take advantage of risk-management programs like livestock price insurance while prices are high and coverage is favourable.

Risk management programs are also an important tool for pork producers, says Manitoba Pork general manager Cam Dahl.

He recommends that producers look into risk management tools where there’s forward contracting or forward pricing, on the feed side as well as the product side.

“That’s not always the perfect solution, but in dealing with that volatility right now, those tools are becoming more and more valuable.”

Dahl says volatility extends to the farm level.

“Whether it’s farrow to finish, if you’re just producing isoweans, or if you’re a nursery or a finisher, everybody’s losing money right now.

“Grain farmers will tell you their prices are falling, but we’re still seeing some of the highest feed prices we’ve seen in history,” says Dahl. “Unfortunately, right now, the price of a hog is falling faster than the price of feed.”

While things remain uncertain, Dahl says he doesn’t expect to see any plant closures in Manitoba.

“I’m confident that there is really a Manitoba advantage to having the processing industry here,” he says. “I don’t see that under threat.”

A version of this article first appeared in the Manitoba Co-operator.

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The launch shows the complexities involved in replacing Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a firm that contracts to clean slaughterhouses. The U.S. government in February said PSSI paid US$1.5 million in penalties for employing more than 100 underage teenagers at meat plants across eight states.

The new company, JBS Sanitation, will “immediately begin the transition” to cleaning 10 JBS USA facilities, which produce beef and pork, according to a statement issued this week. JBS Sanitation will also do in-house cleaning for Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. and create “hundreds of union jobs,” the statement said.

JBS USA is the North American unit of Brazil’s JBS SA, which also owns most of Pilgrim’s Pride.

The North American unit also includes JBS’ beef slaughter and processing operations in Canada. JBS USA’s statement Wednesday referred only to U.S. plants and didn’t say whether the new sanitation company’s operations would extend north of the border.

“We fully expect JBS Sanitation to be cost competitive with other service providers,” JBS USA spokesperson Nikki Richardson said on Thursday, without providing details.

The largest U.S. meatpacking union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International, said it is working with JBS USA on in-house sanitation.

PSSI has said it has a policy against employing minors.

JBS USA previously said it terminated contracts with PSSI at “numerous” facilities, including three plants where alleged child-labour violations occurred. Third-party companies that meet employment verification standards will continue to clean some JBS USA and Pilgrim’s Pride plants, according to the statement.

Meatpacking rival Cargill also said it was cutting all ties with PSSI but the process will take months.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to the largest U.S. meat and chicken processing companies last month, urging them to examine their supply chains for evidence of child labour.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek in Chicago. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The sharp reduction of canola being crushed was due to the 2021 drought on the Canadian Prairies, with far less of the oilseed being harvested.

StatCan reported the 2022 crush came to 8.769 million tonnes, down 11 per cent from the previous year. Also, the amount of oil produced was nearly 3.652 million tonnes, falling 13.4 per cent from the year before. The amount of canola meal in 2022 was 5.222 million tonnes, slipping 8.4 per cent from a year ago.

However, that isn’t the same story for Canada’s soybean output, with 2022 besting the previous two years. StatCan said domestic processors crushed 1.869 million tonnes of soybeans, topping 2021 by 13.3 per cent. Soyoil produced came in at 349.216 tonnes, also up 13.3 per cent. The amount of meal was 1.453 million tonnes, for a 13.3 per cent improvement over 2021.

Soybean production was not as severely affected by the 2021 drought as more than 80 per cent of the crop is grown in Ontario and Quebec, which were largely drought-free that year. Less than 20 per cent of Canada’s soybeans are harvested on the Prairies, the vast majority in Manitoba. As for canola production, well in excess of 90 per cent of it is gleaned from the Prairies.

Table 1. Calendar year canola crush, in millions of tonnes.

Table 2. Calendar year soybean crush, in millions of tonnes.

Source: Statistics Canada, crushing statistics of major oilseeds.

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The province on Tuesday announced plans for what it calls the Alberta Agri-Processing Investment Tax Credit — a 12 per cent, “non-refundable” tax credit for corporations making capital investments in “value-added agri-processing” in Alberta.

The tax credit would be applied against eligible capital expenditures for corporations investing $10 million or more to build, or expand, agri-processing facilities in the province.

Capital investments made as of Tuesday or later may be considered in the calculation of a company’s total tax credit, the province said, adding it will be ready to start accepting applications this spring.

Eligible qualifying applicants may include corporations that have received funding from other provincial sources, the province said.

“We have heard from Alberta’s producers and processors that we need to do more to help grow our province’s agri-processing industry,” provincial Ag Minister Nate Horner said during an announcement at Harmony Beef at Balzac, just north of Calgary.

The province, he said, “has the fundamentals to take our value-added agriculture industry to new heights and meet the increasing global demand for food.”

With the tax credit, “Alberta has positioned itself to attract more large-scale sector investments than ever before from companies like mine,” Harmony CEO Rich Vesta said in the province’s release. “This is the right way for Alberta’s agri-food sector to support diversification, create jobs, compete and win.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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