Chicago-based ADM said it aimed to cut costs by $500 million to $750 million over the next three to five years via job cuts and lower raw materials and manufacturing costs.

Shares of the company were down 1.6 per cent in pre-market trading.

Reuters had reported last week that the grain trader would soon start laying off employees in a global effort to cut costs, as low crop prices weighed on the company’s profit.

ADM has seen profits erode under slow demand and a global glut of staple crops like corn and soybeans, which it buys, sells, processes and ships around the world. Prices of both crops hit four-year lows in 2024 as global stocks of the food staples ballooned to multi-year highs.

The company has warned that a challenging commodities cycle would continue this year and said it was focused on controlling costs to weather the downturn.

ADM forecast adjusted earnings to be in the range of $4 to $4.75 per share in 2025. Analysts on average were expecting $4.67 per share.

Operating profit in ADM’s agricultural services and oilseeds division, its largest segment, tumbled 32 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier on weak North American oilseed crushing margins and uncertainty around biofuel policies.

The carbohydrate solutions segment’s operating profit rose 3 per cent and the nutrition unit swung to a profit.

The company posted an adjusted profit of $1.14 per share for the three months ended Dec. 31, down 16 per cent from $1.36 a year earlier and compared with analysts’ average estimate of $1.15 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

– Additional reporting by Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru.

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The fast-food company is closing its offices “out of respect,” and to “provide dignity, confidentiality, and comfort to our colleagues,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

“It used to be that folks would be called into a conference room with the windows papered over and then have to walk back to their desk to collect their personal belongings and leave with their head down,” the source said.

McDonald’s will have more employees going into new roles this week or receiving promotions then being laid off, the source added. The chain has more than 150,000 employees globally, with about 70 per cent based outside of the U.S., including in company-owned restaurants.

The layoffs do not include the more than two million worker in franchised McDonald’s restaurants around the world.

Chicago-based McDonald’s did not immediately return a request for comment.

McDonald’s said in January that it would review corporate staffing levels as part of an updated business strategy, which could lead to layoffs in some areas and expansion in others.

As part of updating its strategy, McDonald’s also plans to build new restaurants. It has hiked prices on its menu over the last year as commodity and labour costs have soared.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jessica DiNapoli and Hilary Russ in New York.

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Olymel, a division of ag co-operative Sollio, announced Wednesday it will close the former Aliments Triomphe plant at Blainville and its sister plant about 18 km southeast at Laval, both effective April 28.

Olymel CEO Yannick Gervais said in a release that the decision “is part of the reorganization that began more than a year ago and is due to the ability of other facilities to produce the same products and therefore achieve savings and efficiencies.”

As part of a run of acquisitions it undertook in the 2010s, Olymel bought the Triomphe business in 2018, including the Blainville and Laval plants plus a Quebec City facility it closed in 2019.

The federally-inspected Triomphe plants produced hams, pâtés, cretons (meat spreads) and charcuterie (deli meats) mainly for the Quebec market, under brands including Tour Eiffel, Chef Georges, La Belle Bretagne, Nostrano, Alpina, Bilopage and Mother Hen/La Mere Poule.

Most of the Triomphe brands will be maintained, Olymel said Wednesday, and their production volumes will be handled at other Olymel further-processing sites.

The closures at Blainville and Laval affect 134 and 36 unionized employees, respectively, all of whom have received their 12 weeks’ notice under Quebec labour law and will be offered opportunities to relocate to other Olymel sites, the company said.

The fate of the Blainville and Laval buildings, meanwhile, “will be assessed at a later date” before the April 28 closure, the company added.

Gervais said Wednesday the decision should allow the company to “more rapidly” meet its goal of optimizing its business footprint “in the context of unfavourable economic conditions, with rising raw material costs, labour shortages and the weakness of certain markets all affecting (Olymel’s) profitability.”

Sollio, and its Olymel arm, don’t publish quarterly fiscal reports and haven’t yet released full-year results for 2022. In Sollio’s fiscal 2021 report, released last February, Olymel booked a $60.2 million loss before patronage refunds and income taxes, down from earnings of $215.4 million in fiscal 2020.

Olymel’s drop into the red in 2021 was “largely attributable” to its fresh pork operations in Quebec and Alberta, Sollio said in February 2022.

At that time, the company said factors dragging on the bottom line had included a loss of market access to China, a COVID-19-related shutdown at its Red Deer, Alta. hog plant, labour shortages, related outsourcing costs, a four-month strike at its Vallee-Jonction, Que. hog plant, higher hog supply costs and a stronger loonie making Canadian products less attractive internationally.

Olymel in 2022 went on to announce layoffs for 57 management-level employees, plus plans to eliminate another 120 mainly administrative positions via attrition. It also said it will exit the lard processing business and shut its rendering plant at the company’s home office town of St-Hyacinthe; that closure is due to take effect next Friday (Feb. 10). — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Olymel, the meat packing arm of Quebec-based Sollio Cooperative Group, said Tuesday its affected employees were notified Monday and have received their layoff notices.

The company said the 177 total cuts are mostly in “administrative positions,” are “primarily” in its offices in Quebec and include 120 positions which “became open in recent months.”

“The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a historic labour shortage at our facilities, market and supply chain disruptions, raw material price inflation and an uncertain global economic landscape are all factors that make a case for optimized company business models. Olymel is no exception,” CEO Yannick Gervais said in a release.

“After careful analysis, the difficult decision to significantly reduce our management staff is an answer to the need to adapt to unpredictable market conditions and to better position the company for the future.”

Sollio’s Olymel arm in fiscal 2021 booked a $60.2 million loss before patronage refunds and income taxes, down from earnings of $215.4 million in fiscal 2020.

That dip into the red was “largely attributable” to the packer’s fresh pork operations in Quebec and Alberta, Sollio said in its annual report in February.

It cited factors such as a loss of market access to China, a four-month strike at its Vallee-Jonction, Que. pork plant, a COVID-19-related shutdown at its Red Deer, Alta. hog plant, labour shortages, related outsourcing costs, higher hog supply costs and, at the time, a stronger loonie, which makes Canadian products less attractive to importers elsewhere.

Headquartered at St-Hyacinthe, Que., Olymel employs about 14,000 people across the country, with slaughter and processing facilities including 15 pork and poultry plants in Quebec, the Red Deer pork plant, two poultry plants and a pork plant in Ontario, plus the Sunnymel poultry plant at Clair, New Brunswick. The company’s combined slaughter capacity in Canada sits at about 185,000 hogs and 2.4 million birds per week.

Its other operations include the Olysky hog production business at Humboldt, Sask., distribution centres in Quebec and Red Deer, and processing machinery, trucking and sales facilities in Quebec.

The company sells its products in Canada under brands including Olymel, Lafleur, Flamingo, La Fernandiere, Pinty’s, Tour Eiffel and F. Menard, and exports about a third of its meat production, with customers in over 65 countries.

Olymel said Wednesday it believes the administrative cuts “will help eliminate duplicate tasks and lead to savings and efficiency gains to meet market conditions that require greater agility in achieving strategic business objectives.”

A review found the cuts were necessary “given the market context and growth challenges the company is facing,” the company added. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Olymel announced Tuesday it will “abolish” the evening shift at its hog slaughter and processing plant at Vallee-Jonction, about 60 km southeast of Quebec City, by the end of this year “if no agreement is reached and accepted by union members” by Sunday night.

If a deal isn’t reached and approved by the membership of the CSN-affiliated Syndicat des travailleurs d’Olymel Vallee-Jonction (STOVJ) before midnight, “more than 500” workers at the plant will get four months’ notice of termination, the company said.

The company said it has “seriously assessed every option… and weighed the concerns and uncertainty that this strike continues to cause for the plant’s supplies and deliveries to its customers.”

STOVJ president Martin Maurice, in a separate statement late Tuesday, said it’s “not the first time” Olymel has raised the possibility of job cuts at Vallee-Jonction.

In 2007, he said, workers at the plant took pay cuts of almost 40 per cent against the threat of Olymel shutting the facility entirely. Between then and now, he said, the plant’s lowest-paid employees have seen a base salary increase of $1.13 per hour, “or about eight cents per year.”

Olymel’s announcement follows the STOVJ membership’s 57 per cent vote last week to reject an agreement in principle reached between the company and union officials. The union represents about 1,050 employees at the Vallee-Jonction plant.

“Employees have until midnight Sunday to reconsider the no vote on Aug. 17,” Olymel senior vice-president Paul Beauchamp said in Tuesday’s release.

The company, he said, “is still willing to make adjustments within the parameters of the Aug. 14 agreement in principle, but will not be able to increase the monetary aspects of this agreement in any way, as it would compromise the plant’s viability and competitiveness.”

Olymel had said in June that the union was seeking wage increases that “would have put this plant out of step with its competitors and jeopardized its viability.”

Plant workers “must understand that they already bear full responsibility for the dramatic situation of the hogs awaiting slaughter, their impending euthanasia, and the food waste that will result,” Beauchamp said Tuesday.

“Now they will also be responsible for the loss of 500 jobs and the consequences on these individuals, their families and the regional economy.”

Les Eleveurs de porcs du Quebec, the province’s hog producer group, estimates about 150,000 market-weight hogs were backed up on farms awaiting slaughter as of Wednesday last week.

The group said previously it has been working with Olymel to try and manage the backlog, by shipping animals to slaughter outside the province and/or by selling off piglets to free up barn space. The Vallee-Jonction plant has capacity to slaughter about 35,000 hogs per week.

Since last week’s employee vote, the hog farmer group has called on Premier Francois Legualt to intervene in the dispute, while the third-string provincial opposition Parti Quebecois has called on the province to seek arbitration rather than mediation to end the standoff.

Olymel said its officials have met three times since Thursday with special mediator Jean Poirier, who provincial Labour Minister Jean Boulet appointed Wednesday to try and reach a new agreement following the employee vote, and are “at (his) disposal” for further discussions.

The Vallee-Jonction plant, in business since 1965, became part of the meats division of La Coop federee (now Sollio) in 1975. The plant in 2016 added a ham deboning line that was expected to bring its total workforce to about 1,200.

The plant, Olymel said, produces boned products, pork cuts and fresh chilled pork, mostly for export markets, mainly Japan, the U.S. and Mexico. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Longueuil, Que.-based Agropur announced Thursday it will eliminate 60 positions and temporarily lay off another 200 employees, all from its Canadian operations.

In the “unprecedented context” of COVID-19, Agropur said in a release, its “priority is to maintain its dairy manufacturing and distribution operations, which constitute an essential public service.”

The layoffs affect employees “not assigned to essential operational duties,” the company said.

“These are difficult decisions to make but they are necessary in order to maintain the sustainability of our business,” Agropur CEO Emile Cordeau said in Thursday’s release. “Our goal is to bring the temporarily laid-off employees back to work as soon as we can resume the normal course of business.”

The staff cuts and layoffs announced Thursday follow a round of cuts in November that affected 125 Agropur employees, in what it described at the time as an “organizational review to increase the profitability of its Canadian operations.”

The co-operative — which has over 3,000 farmer members, and whose dairy brands include Lucerne, Natrel, Iogo, Olympic and Quebon — booked net earnings of $40.18 million on record sales of $7.255 billion in 2019, down from $67.69 million on $6.714 billion in sales the previous year.

While Agropur’s U.S. operations were supportive to net earnings as “the relationship between the cheese price and the cost of milk improved” in 2019, its Canadian operations showed decreased earnings due to “the competitive environment and operational issues.”

Agropur said Thursday it “moved quickly in the early days” of the pandemic to set up employee health and safety measures and “a business continuity plan to ensure it can continue delivering high-quality dairy products to its customers and consumers.”

Instructions are in place and have been “toughened” for staff regarding travel restrictions and telework as well as hygiene, disinfection, mandatory reporting of illness and access control at all sites for all employees, suppliers and visitors, the company said. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Earlier this week, police made 10 arrests and cleared a blockade in eastern Ontario that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for almost three weeks on one of Canada’s busiest lines.

The blockades were held in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia, who are seeking to stop TC Energy from building a gas pipeline over their land.

“In the absence of illegal blockades on our network over the last 24 hours, and while we are keeping a close watch for any further disruptions, we have started calling back many of the temporarily laid off employees based in Eastern Canada,” CN CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest said in the email seen by Reuters.

The email did not specify how many of the 450 workers were being called back.

After 21 days of disruptions, “there is a significant backlog of trains parked on our tracks and in our yards that will be processed,” the email said.

“The complete network recovery process will take several weeks.”

Montreal-based CN said the company was on its way to recovering in Western Canada, and said products such as export grain, imported containerized goods, coal, potash and other commodities are moving to market.

Canada relies on CN and rival Canadian Pacific Railway to move crops, oil, potash, coal and manufactured goods to ports and the United States. About half of Canada’s exports move by rail, according to industry data.

— Reporting for Reuters by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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The company announced Thursday it’s been “forced to initiate a disciplined and progressive shutdown” in the region, which means “stopping and safely securing all transcontinental trains across its Canadian network.”

The decision “may imminently lead” to temporary layoffs in the region, the company added.

The blockades, now in their seventh day, stem from protests against construction of a Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia and have disrupted both freight and passenger traffic.

The protests across the country are in support of hereditary chiefs of Wet’suwet’en Nation, who assert authority over traditional lands through which the natural gas pipeline is meant to run. The community’s elected officials and other elected band councils along the route have publicly supported the Coastal GasLink project.

As court orders have been issued and enforced, CN said Thursday, blockades have come down in Manitoba and “may be ending imminently” in British Columbia.

Similar orders in Ontario, though, “have yet to be enforced and continue to be ignored,” the company said.

CN CEO JJ Ruest, in a release Thursday, described the move as the “responsible approach to take for the safety of our employees and the protestors.”

Over 400 CN trains have been cancelled during the past week and new protests have appeared “at strategic locations on our mainline,” he said.

The shutdown process, he said, will take place in a way ensuring CN is “well set up for recovery, which will come when the illegal blockades end completely.”

‘Chaos’

Grain Growers of Canada on Thursday called for the federal government to seek a resolution to end rail delays caused by the blockades.

Such delays “will have immediate, unintended consequences for farmers across the country,” GGC chair Jeff Nielsen said Thursday in a separate release.

“Grain farmers should not be held hostage through this issue,” Daryl Fransoo, a Saskatchewan director with the Western Canadian Wheat Growers, said in a separate statement Wednesday. “We call upon the federal and provincial authorities to enforce the law, and clear the blockades.”

Industry group Fertilizer Canada also called Thursday for the federal government and provinces to either “resolve the dispute with Indigenous people or enforce the law of the land.”

“We were already facing a challenge to help farmers catch up and get the fertilizer they need in time for seeding in April and May,” Fertilizer Canada’s CEO, Garth Whyte, said in a release. “They can’t afford this kind of chaos.”

Inter-city Via Rail will also be halted, CN said Thursday, but commuter rail services such as southern Ontario’s Metrolinx and Montreal-based Exo can keep operating on CN tracks “so long as they can do so safely.”

Exo said Thursday it plans to continue to provide shuttle buses instead of its exo4 Candiac rail service as demonstrators have blocked a Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) track it uses. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Saskatoon-based Nutrien announced Monday it “will be forced to curtail production” at its Rocanville, Sask. mine due to the CN rail strike.

The company said it had served employees with notice that day, stating the mine will shut down for two weeks starting Dec. 2. Over 500 employees would be temporarily laid off, according to media reports Monday.

“It is extremely disappointing that in a year when the agricultural sector has been severely impacted by poor weather and trade disputes, the CN strike will add further hardship to the Canadian agriculture industry,” Nutrien CEO Chuck Magro said Monday in a release.

Most concerning, he added, “is the impact on our hundreds of employees for whom this creates great uncertainty and hardship leading up to the holiday season.”

CN and its conductors’ and yard workers’ union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, announced Tuesday they’ve reached a tentative agreement to end the eight-day strike by over 3,000 employees and would resume work that day.

However, “unfortunately, we’re still going to have to complete the two-week downtime” at Rocanville, Jeff Holzman, Nutrien’s senior director for investor and corporate relations, said Tuesday afternoon.

Given the eight-day halt in rail traffic, the downtime at Rocanville is still necessary “to get our system back in balance,” he said.

Nutrien, he added, is “obviously” happy the strike has ended, which will “prevent further issues” in the company’s supply chain.

The Rocanville mine, about 100 km northwest of Virden, Man., is Nutrien’s largest single producer with nameplate capacity for 6.5 million tonnes of red potash per year. Its “operational capability” for 2019 is listed at 5.4 million tonnes.

The mine is connected to CN’s mainline west of St. Lazare, Man., and to Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) track near Rocanville.

Nutrien had already announced in mid-September it would “proactively” take inventory shutdowns of up to eight weeks at its Allan, Lanigan and Vanscoy, Sask. potash mines during the fourth quarter, “in response to a short-term slowdown in global potash markets.”

Idling the three sites for the full eight weeks would cut Nutrien’s 2019 potash production by about 700,000 tonnes and cut the company’s annual EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) on potash by US$100 million to $150 million, the company said at the time. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The company will lay off 1,600 employees in the U.S. and Canada, according to a report by the Globe and Mail.

The announcement comes amid declining freight volumes as trade tensions have weighed on the North American economy.

The number of people to be laid off could rise if demand from rail customers continues to decline, the Canadian newspaper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

A CN spokesman said the action, which includes sending some of its employees on temporary leave, has already begun across its network.

— Reporting for Reuters by Dominic Roshan K.L. in Bangalore.

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