Paris | Reuters — Louis Dreyfus Company has acquired grains and oilseeds processing, storage and trading activities in Hungary and Poland from rival agricultural commodity merchant Bunge Global, LDC said on Monday.
The deal covers assets previously owned by Viterra that Bunge had offered to sell in order to secure European Union approval for its US$34 billion merger with Viterra.
In Hungary, the activities include an oilseed processing plant in Fokto that is one of Europe’s largest sunflower seed crushing facilities, LDC said in a statement.
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The Polish assets feature an oilseed facility at Bodaczow that accounts for around 15 per cent of Poland’s total rapeseed crush volume, it said.
The deal also covers trading offices in the Hungarian capital Budapest and the Polish port city of Gdansk.
Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition would allow LDC to expand in the sunflower market and in Central European countries, complementing its existing grains and meals business in Poland, Andre Roth, LDC’s head of grains and oilseeds, said in the statement.
Bunge officially completed its merger with Viterra at the start of July, two years after announcing the transaction.
— Reporting by Gus Trompiz and Sudip Kar-Gupta
