[caption id="attachment_8088" align="aligncenter" width="820"]
James Richardson International’s purchase of St. Louis-based Italgrani USA Inc. includes its milling facility and headquarters in St. Louis (shown), a merchandising office in Minneapolis and storage facilities in North Dakota. Picture: Collected[/caption]
A subsidiary of Winnipeg-based Richardson International Limited has closed its acquisition of the largest durum and semolina processor in the U.S., Italgrani USA Inc.
The milling facility and company headquarters is in St. Louis, Mo., and the company has storage and grain input facilities in North Dakota and a merchandising office in Minneapolis.
The acquisition is part of Richardson’s fairly aggressive expansion into the processing side of the grains business as well as gaining increasing presence in the U.S. market.
The deal is part of what is now a two-decade long investment strategy, first into canola crushing, then oats processing and now durum and semolina.
That process began in 1999 with the acquisition of a canola crushing plant in Lethbridge, Alta. followed by the construction of another canola crushing plant in Yorkton, Sask.
In early 2019, it acquired the Wesson cooking oil business from ConAgra with its large production facility in Memphis. Tenn.
It has acquired a string of oat processing facilities starting in 2013 including Can-Oats in Portage la Prairie and facilities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Nebraska. In 2017 it acquired European Oat Millers, in Bedford, Eng., the second-largest oat miller in Europe
No financial details of the Italgrani acquisition were released, but it is a large operation that undertook a major expansion a couple of years ago. In 2016, the company had revenue of US$381 million.
"We are excited to further diversify our processing operations — building on the success of both our value-added canola crushing and oat milling businesses — and expand our grain origination capabilities in a new marketplace," said Curt Vossen, president and CEO of Richardson International.
As with its other recent acquisitions, the company has said all of Italgrani’s more than 100 employees will continue working with Richardson. See details.
Source: Online/KSU
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