Cargill scraps crop input and grain centre

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario Cargill Limited isn’t renewing its lease on a facility at Greenway and that means farmers using the crop input and grain centre will need to schedule times for product delivery and grain pick up effective July 1.

Cargill announced March 30 that it’s not renewing the property lease on the Greenway, Ontario facility located 50 kilometres northwest of London. The property’s owner, Huron Grain Ltd., is now looking for a new tenant, it says in a Cargill news release announcing the changes. Huron Grain has been a valued business partner to Cargill for the past 25 years.

Andrei Grigore, Cargill farm service group manager, says business will continue as it is now for spring planting because the changes don’t take effect until July 1. After that time farmers can contact Cargill directly to have inputs delivered to their farm. Farmers can “schedule when the product gets delivered to their farm instead of them trying to pick it up themselves,” he says.

For post harvest grain deliveries, farmers will be able to contact Cargill and schedule a time to have their grain picked up. Grigore says the change to a direct-to-farm way of doing business is more convenient for farmers.

Cargill plans to maintain a sales person in the area, who will be the farmers’ main contact person. In addition, there are other Cargill facilities in the area to serve farmers, such as Clinton, Melbourne, Strathroy, Shetland and Sarnia.

Grigore declined to elaborate on why Cargill decided to not renew its lease on the Greenway facility. “It’s basically a strategic business decision we’ve made.”

The four employees at Greenway have been offered positions within the company.

Cargill is an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services. It’s a privately held company that was founded in 1865. It has 131,000 employees in 66 countries. Cargill Canada’s headquarters are in Winnipeg. BF