COFCO signs investment agreement with Nidera

China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corp, known as COFCO and the country's largest food trader, signed an official investment agreement with the Netherlands-based agricultural and commodity trading group Nidera BV on Sunday to acquire 51 percent of its stock and establish a strategic cooperation.

The cooperation is the largest international acquisition in the history of the Chinese agricultural industry. COFCO and Nidera will establish channels to share market information and initiate cooperation in areas such as the seed business.

Nidera is a major international agribusiness and trading company with an annual turnover in excess of $17 billion, trade volume of more than 52 million metric tons, origination purchase volume over 11 million tons and agri-technological product sales of more than 954,000 tons. Soybean, wheat and corn are the major commodities traded by Nidera.

Currently, the basic pattern of global agricultural trade flow is from the Americas into Asia, and the supply from emerging markets has been growing rapidly. Brazil and Argentina account for much of the exports of agricultural products such as soybeans and corn.

The Dutch company has a comprehensive storage and logistics network in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and other South American regions. It has an inland storage capacity of 1.27 million tons, of which 477,000 tons in Argentina and 587,000 tons in Brazil.

Its annual throughput capacity in South America is 13.53 million tons, of which 5.5 million tons comes from Argentina and 3.03 million tons from Brazil. Its storage and logistics facilities also cover North America and areas such as Britain, Spain, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

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