Food Ingredients Provider Cargill: Strong Fiscal 2009

Cargill has come a long way, since the American frontier in 1865, as an international provider of food and agricultural products.

The privately-held company (with an amazing history [.pdf]) also offers financial and risk management services around the world including programs that help farmers perfect and protect their crops.

Cargill's product list includes, but is not limited to:

• Salts
• Starches and derivatives
• Sweeteners
• Beverage ingredients and flavorings
• Flours and grains
• Citrates

(Note: Cooperative Purchasers distributes many of these fine food and beverage ingredients from Cargill and other processors... see the above links.)

And this year, Cargill has seen one of the best years in company history, second only to last year (Fiscal 2008).

For fiscal year 2009, Cargill earned an impressive $3.33 billion (a 16% decrease over 2008's $3.95 billion).

In addition, revenues were $116.6 billion (3% drop) and cash flow operations were $6.7 billion (6% decrease).

At present, Cargill has 75 businesses organized around five major areas:

• Agricultural services
• Food Ingredients and applications
• Origination and Processing
• Risk Management and Financial
• Industrial

Of the five, the industrial segment was the only one that beat last year, however the company's business model succeeded despite the decline in global economic growth.

Greg Page, CEO and company chairman, said,

"In the second half, earnings slowed considerably as the world economy contracted for the first time in six decades. In the end, the net effect was the second-best year in our company's history."

Reported factors that contributed to this year's success revolve around Cargill's global investments, including:

1. opening/expanding processing facilities (canola, cocoa, pam, soy and biofuels) in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Ghana, and the US.


2. increasing base-level spending to keep processing plants in pristine condition, which helps facilitate food safety and energy efficiency.

Page charges Cargill's profitability to business diversity and skilled planning.

"We acted early to reduce the costs and decrease the use of debt and operating working capital.

"Our trading teams anticipated price volatility correctly in both the run-up and the run down in commodity values.

"We kept the focus on being a reliable supplier to our customers - helping them meet the challenges of these difficult economic times."

Like many companies, Cargill is cautious but optimistic about economic growth in the current global economy and recognizes that recovery will take time.

Cargill remains committed to serving their customers and improving health and nutrition through quality food ingredients.