The Saudi Agricultural Livestock Investment Corporation (SALIC), which has joined forces with Bunge to create G3, is an investment arm of Saudi Kingdom, G3 CEO Karl Gerrand said during the Cereals of North America meeting in Winnipeg Nov. 3.
“They (Saudi Arabia) wanted to invest in infrastructure around the world that promotes the movement of export grain from countries with excess, surplus grain to market so they could benefit from that flow of grain,” Gerrand said. “For those who aren’t familiar with Saudi Arabia, it is running out of water. Its aquifers are draining so it’s moving away from a government policy where it grows grain within the country and it wants to instead import all of its grain. So SALIC’s investment in us is part of that. It’s a common vision of wanting to build infrastructure in Canada, which is viewed as one of the highest-quality and most dependable markets in the world for grain. G3 was born from that vision.”
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Buying CWB was not originally part of the plan, “but it was an opportunity that came along, so we invested in the Canadian Wheat Board and shortly after that we bought from Bunge, Bunge Canada’s grain assets,” Gerrand said.
Gerrand doesn’t rule out G3 buying some Viterra assets, but only if they fit the company’s model for creating efficient grain handling.
“We’re certainly in the market,” he said.
“We are pretty careful to stick to our vision because we believe the place in the industry for us has to be a unique proposition to the farmer, to the industry and to the market and if we’re not it’s going to be very, very hard for us to compete. So if assets were made available… that provide a benefit to that end we’d certainly be interested.”
Glencore, Viterra’s parent company, wants to sell some of Viterra’s assets to pay down debt.
