Cargill 1st-quarter profit surges 67 percent to $288 million
Bloomberg News
Published Oct 17 2001
Cargill Inc., the largest U.S. agricultural company, said its fiscal
first-quarter profit rose 67 percent on improved returns from
its grain, oilseed, meat-processing and animal-feed businesses.
Profit in the quarter rose to $288 million from $172 million the
previous year, according to the Minnetonka-based company.
Privately-owned Cargill has shed non-farm businesses and
closed unprofitable plants. It also invested in meat, ethanol and
animal-feed production to expand its market share against
competitors such as Tyson Foods Inc., Archer Daniels Midland
Co. and ConAgra Foods Inc.
"We simply had a majority of businesses show improvement" in
the quarter, spokeswoman Lisa Clemens said.
The company's grain-processing business, which crushes
soybeans to make animal feed and oil, showed improved
earnings because of lower costs after Cargill closed two plants,
Clemens said. A plant in Belgium also will be closed.
"We had to address the overcapacity in the industry," she said.
Processing margins on soybeans "were depressed for a couple of
years and have improved."
The animal feed business benefited from the $535 million
acquisition in April of Agribrands International.
"That integration has gone smoothly and earnings were
accretive in the first quarter," Clemens said.
Other Cargill businesses, particularly fertilizer and steel, were
hurt by low prices and weak demand. Those units "remained
challenged," the company said in a prepared statement.
In addition to closing flour and soybean mills this year, Cargill
has laid off 350 workers at its Excel unit, the second-largest
U.S. producer of beef, and spent $15 million to close its
Marshall, Mo., slaughterhouse. The plant is being converted to
package smaller cuts of meat for supermarkets.
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