World Grain - September 2013 - 32

FEATURE: pursuing a global footprint

Bunge IPO part of ‘sea change’ across entire grain industry
When Alberto Weisser joined Bunge Ltd. as chief financial officer in 1993, the company was based in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, and had a plan to go public that was anything but a
sure thing.
“It was a dream that we were not sure we would be able to
achieve,” he said.
“This was a commodity company, and competitors in our arena
thought it was not possible,” he said. “Most of the others were
private — Cargill, Continental and Andre. Only ADM was public,
but they began as an industrial company.”
The completion of the 2001 IPO “felt very good,” Weisser said,
but he added that the company’s share price did not do much
at first. Just a month after the offering, the stock market and
the economy were hit hard by the Sept. 11 attacks in New York,
about 30 miles from the White Plains, New York, U.S., headquarters where the company relocated in 1999.
Since then, Bunge’s share price has sharply advanced — up
commodity handling and trade helps
explain the emergence in recent
years of new large players like Olam
International Ltd., Glencore Xstrata
and Wilmar International, Weisser
said. These entrants evolved amid a
marketplace that was already undergoing wrenching change.
“Continental Grain and Andre disappeared so we took over a lot of the
business, as did Cargill,” Weisser said.
“You used to have many more smaller

390%, adjusted for dividends, since August 2001.
Bunge is not alone among grain companies when it comes to
change since the 1990s. Because many of the leading grain companies worldwide today are either public or have other disclosure
requirements, perceptions of the grain trading industry as one
shrouded in secrecy are changing, Weisser said.
“We have to be much more transparent,” he said. “I spent, we
all spent a lot of time talking to public stakeholders, communities, non-governmental organizations, governments. You would
be surprised how much time I spent with the Chinese government, the Middle East to talk about food security, how the system
works and with non-governmental organizations about what’s
going on with the environment and things like that. When you
are a private company you don’t need to do this. But as a public
company you have to do it, and it’s also an opportunity to explain
that we are doing a good service to the community because we
serve so many people.”

brokers. That doesn’t work anymore.
You can’t have single individual commercial people doing it because you
need the assets. I think that is probably
the big change that now affects this
business — you need assets. That’s why
you need strong, global companies and
that is why you see also companies like
Marubeni buying Gavilon. And the third
tier companies becoming second tier. Or
Glencore buying Viterra. There is room
for these companies.”

With expanded refining capacity and a packaging plant, Bunge’s integrated soybean processing plant
in Decatur, Alabama, U.S., can more efficiently serve food customers in the southeastern U.S.
32

Adding to the importance of a global
footprint is re-emergence of Eastern
Europe in grains and growth of South
America as large exporters of grain,
Weisser said.
“In the early 1990s most of the grain
came from the U.S. and now it is more
evenly originated — North America,
including Canada; South America —
Argentina, Brazil; Eastern Europe —
Ukraine, Russia,” he said. “That is major change. And that also means substitution occurs with wheat, barley, corn
and other grains. That is why our teams
are global. Our Bunge Global Markets
staff includes Danes, Americans,
Dutch, Brazilians, Argentines, Italians,
Russians. When you go into our different operations you would be amazed
how many nationalities there are. We
want that range of experience.”
Tracing Bunge’s path toward establishing a global footprint, Weisser said
efforts intensified in the largest emerging nations after the company had established a strong presence in the Americas
and Europe. The key move was the 2002
acquisition of a controlling interest in
Cereol S.A., which made Bunge the
world’s largest oilseeds processor.
For Bunge as well as other companies,
consolidation does not necessarily mean

September 2013 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com
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World Grain - September 2013

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