View of the damage to the grain terminal Nika Tera, while Russia’s attacks on Ukraine continue, in Nikolaev, Ukraine, June 12, 2022 EDGAR SU / Reuters
Grain storage terminals owned by the Canadian Viterra and the American company Bunge Ltd. BG-N, were attacked by Russian forces in a move that could further undermine global food security.
Viterra confirmed to numerous news outlets that its Everi terminal in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolaev was hit on Wednesday and set on fire. The company said no one was killed, but one employee was treated for burns.
Viterra’s largest shareholder is the Anglo-Swiss commodity mining and trading conglomerate Glencore AG, but two Canadian pension funds, CPP Investments and the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, also hold significant stakes.
The St. Louis-based Bunge, which has a grain facility in Nikolaev, was also targeted, Reuters reported. Bunge said the plant was closed after Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, and there were no casualties.
Attacks on grain traders come as countries around the world struggle to find a way to export food from Ukrainian ports. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February sparked a global food crisis – threatening food supplies to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Before the war, Ukraine – a major producer of wheat, corn and vegetable oils – exported enough food to feed 400 million people worldwide, most of them through the country’s seven Black Sea ports. But after the invasion, these ports were blocked, leaving millions of metric tons of grain blocked in silos, ports and ships. Meanwhile, sanctions against Russia and its allies – major producers of grain as well as fertilizers and oil – have led to further tensions in food supplies.
Viterra was a publicly traded Canadian company, and in the 2000s it was run by the well-known agribusiness CEO Mayo Schmid. It has turned the regional cooperative into a global giant for fertilizers, crop chemicals and seeds. In 2012, Viterra was acquired by Glencore for $ 6.1 billion. Glencore later sold half of the business to CPP Investments and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation.
At the end of last year, Viterra owned assets worth $ 417 million in Ukraine.
The conflict in Ukraine has led to rising world food prices. In the months following Russia’s invasion, wheat and corn export prices jumped by more than 20 percent.
But in the world’s poorest countries, the results are even worse. Many of these countries, especially in the Middle East and Africa, rely on the region for their staple food. Lebanon, for example, depends on Ukraine for about 80 percent of its wheat.
Unless the war is resolved immediately, the World Food Program says an additional 47 million people worldwide will be starved. “We’re running out of time,” said WFP CEO David Beasley last month. “The cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine.”
In recent weeks, the United Nations has been working on a plan to ensure the safe passage of grain exports outside the region. Earlier this month, UN officials described talks with Russia on the plan as constructive.
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