Japanese commodity trading company Mitsui and Co. has bought a 40 per cent partnership stake in Louis Dreyfus Canada’s planned canola processing plant at Yorkton, Sask.
Brant Randles, president of Louis Dreyfus Canada, said Thursday that the partnership is “a positive step for everyone involved” and will strengthen the two companies’ long-standing business relationship.
Louis Dreyfus Canada, the Canadian arm of the Paris-based global commodity trading and processing firm, has started preliminary site work at Yorkton and plans to begin full-scale construction this spring, for start-up in the summer of 2009.
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The Yorkton plant is expected to process 850,000 tonnes of canola per year into 350,000 tonnes of canola oil and 500,000 tonnes of meal. It will bring Dreyfus’ worldwide oilseed processing capacity to 36,000 tonnes per day, the company noted.
Dreyfus announced its plan for the southeastern Saskatchewan city in the fall of 2006, at the same time as James Richardson International announced plans for its own crush plant, also at Yorkton. JRI told reporters in September that although its labour and material costs have since escalated, it still plans to build its plant for a late 2009 start-up.
Tokyo-based Mitsui runs 160 offices in 68 countries and invests across a broad spectrum including financial and commodity markets, metals and minerals, machinery, electronics, information and consumer goods and services.
It’s also no stranger to Prairie agriculture in Canada. Apart from its existing relationship with Dreyfus, Mitsui also signed a multi-year supply agreement in May 2006 with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, now part of Viterra, to ship Prairie oilseeds to Japan.
Mitsui’s supply agreement with SaskPool included an $8 million equity position in the company, which translated at that time to a stake worth about 1.2 per cent of the Pool. “Securing food resources is crucial for Mitsui,” a Mitsui spokesperson said at that time.
