AFTER decades of keeping a relatively low profile in Australian agribusiness, 2011 has been a game-changing year for US-based commodities powerhouse, Cargill.
Cargill was the $US120 billion-a-year name behind two of 2011's big farm sector business deals - the buy-up of one-time national wheat trader AWB and a powerful joint venture meat processing deal with Queensland-based Teys Brothers.
The $870 million AWB acquisition has taken Cargill's role from oilseed crusher and selective second tier grain trader to Australia's equal biggest grain market player.
This financial year Cargill expects to handle up to 8.5m tonnes of the Australian winter and summer grain crop (up from 2.5m last year), including about a third of the total wheat export task shared between 24 registered traders.
Cargill will also use its newly acquired AWB grain pool strength to give it valuable experience and leverage in Canada where the Canadian Wheat Board's export single desk is dismantled in 2012.
Like Australia, export pools have long been popular with Canadian growers delivering to their Wheat Board.
In meat, the 50-50 meat venture with Teys (which replaced the Packer family's Consolidated Holding's share in Teys Meat Group) has created Australia's second biggest red meat processor.
Cargill's meat interests in Australia have been growing since purchasing the Wagga Wagga abattoir in southern NSW two decades ago.
The company also owned other NSW enterprises - a boning and packing site at Tamworth and the Jindalee feedlot at Stockinbingal - which are now all part of the Teys joint venture.
Overseas, the privately-owned Cargill is a big league meat business, supplying about 22 per cent of the US domestic market.
In beef-rich Argentina it is the biggest meat exporter and in Thailand the largest poultry producer.
In the grain game the company is a major global trader and processor of wheat, barley, corn, oilseeds and sorghum, as well as a big stockfeed processor.
Last month its feed business expanded significantly after paying $US2.1b for the French-based animal nutrition company, Provimi.
Ties to the local grain trade date back to wheat purchases from the Australian Wheat Board in 1967, progressing to crushing oilseed cops at plants in Melbourne and Narrabri and Newcastle in NSW.
But Cargill's big break in grain came early this year when Canadian-owned farm products and services giant Agrium quickly offloaded the iconic AWB grain business.
Within a month of achieving its $1.2b takeover of AWB-Landmark last December, Agrium organised the sale of the AWB commodities division to Cargill, including the 22 GrainFlow bulk storage sites which the company is now spending about $10m upgrading to help it handle this season's big harvest.
In the increasingly hotly contested Australian grain market, the once farmer-owned AWB brand name has been a coup for the global trader.
"Cargill previously had some regional strength in the grain industry, mostly in NSW, but AWB had a far greater national reputation at the farm gate and considerable brand equity," said Cargill's commercial general manager Mitch Morison.
"Research shows the AWB brand is still number one in the grain industry.
"Cargill deliberately made the decision to keep the name at the forefront of its grain accumulation relationship with customers in Australia."
This harvest Cargill has used AWB's farmgate links to ramp up its lupin and pulse pool business, going head-to-head with dominant pulse exporter Western Australia's CBH, and lupin marketing initiatives by Glencore and Emerald.
The company is also now using its vast accumulation network to further enlarge its profile in the oilseed market, increasing its canola exports to Europe for biofuel and tapping into more crushing opportunities for sunflowers.
Cargill's international connections have secured certification for its Australian arm to supply canola under the European Union's biomass biofuels sustainability scheme which aims to help Europe reach a 20pc renewable energy target by 2020.
As a major oilseed crusher with refining capacity at its Newcastle plant, Cargill is also fielding strong customer demand for "healthy" monounsaturated sunflower oil as an alternative to Australia's imports, mostly from Argentina.
Farmers have been offered special fixed price deals at planting as part of Cargill's bid to promote a sunflower production revival in eastern Australia.
Meanwhile, Mr Morison said long term growth in stockfeed markets such as poultry, dairy and beef feedlots, promised good demand for oilseed meal, despite the unpredictable economics of the crushing business.
He said opportunities to grow its refined oil business were also tempting.
In 2009 Cargill tried to dramatically expand its refining activities by buying Goodman Fielder's commercial fats and oils business, but the deal was blocked by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
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