World Grain - January 2020 - 36

FEATURE: RANKING THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FLOUR MILLERS

of its largest food companies. Faced with a declining population and stagnant consumption in its home
market, the company increasingly has looked overseas for growth. Its U.S. subsidiary Miller Milling,
based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, operates six plants
including three in California. Three of these locations
were acquired from ConAgra and one from Cargill's
Horizon Milling during the formation of Ardent in
2014, enabling Nisshin to become the fourth largest in
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(88,000 cwts) daily capacity. The company recently
announced the closure of its 816-tonne-per-day mill in
1HZ 3UDJXH 0LQQHVRWD 86 ,WV ¿UVW RYHUVHDV PLOOing venture was Rogers Foods with two mills in British
Columbia, Canada, that also partially serve the U.S.
market. Its next overseas move was in Thailand, where
it built and operates two plants. In early 2019, Nisshin
acquired Australia's market leader Allied Pinnacle
Mills - originally a joint venture between GrainCorp
DQG&DUJLOO²IURPDSULYDWHHTXLW\¿UPWKDWKDGDFquired it in 2017. The 11 milling sites in Australia combined with the two plants of Champion Flour Milling
in New Zealand make Nisshin the largest milling company in Oceania.

of Jakarta, a number of the site's 15 milling lines were
expanded from 800 to 1,200 tonnes per day in the
last two years to raise total daily capacity to 11,650
tonnes, equivalent to 3.5 million tonnes of wheat annually. Bogasari's second mill in the port of Surabaya, at
the eastern end of the densely populated island of Java,
also ranks globally among the biggest at 6,150 tonnes
per day. Expansion in Cibitung in West Java near
Jakarta will raise capacity there to 2,600 tonnes. The
country's 270 million people are expected to continue
eating more wheat-based products as incomes rise and
diets diversify. Indofood takes 22% of Bogasari's output, mainly for noodle production at dozens of factories distributed throughout the vast archipelago. After
Egypt, Indonesia is the world's No. 2 wheat importer at
11 million tonnes per year in 2019. Since deregulation
of the industry in 1998, the number of milling compaQLHVKDVMXPSHGIURP¿YHWRUHVXOWLQJLQDGHFOLQH
of Bogasari's market share to around 50%.

Nisshin Seifun Group
Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
Installed capacity: 20,000 tonnes per day
Countries: Japan, United States, Canada
Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, China

Founded in 1900 as Tatebayashi Flour Milling, Nisshin
Seifun Group is Japan's largest wheat miller and one
36

COFCO Group
Headquarters: Beijing, China
Installed capacity: 13,900 tonnes
Countries: China

As a sprawling, state-owned, "national champion" food
conglomerate with 409 billion yuan ($58 billion) in anQXDO UHYHQXHV &2)&2 GL൵HUV VKDUSO\ IURP LWV ÀRXU
industry rivals. Domestic wheat milling is just a small
part of its total business mix. COFCO's Hong Konglisted China Agri Industries Holding Ltd. subsidiary reSRUWHG¿UVWKDOIZKHDWSURGXFWVVDOHVZLWKDYDOXH
of HK$6.2 billion (U.S.$1.46 billion), ranking it third
behind the company's oilseed crushing (HK$43 billion)
and rice milling (HK$9.1 billion) segments. COFCO's
16 milling sites are in 12 provinces and cities. Average
mill size of below 900 tonnes results in part from
COFCO's early history of rescuing failing government
mills. Six of its sites are less than 600 tonnes per day. In
the last year, COFCO acquired a 1,200-tonne-per-day
mill in Tianjin to strengthen its position in the BeijingTianjin metropolitan region. In contrast to the organic growth models practiced by Wilmar and Wudeli,
COFCO formerly relied on acquisitions but has more
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plants. Sources report that the company has projects to
add 7,000 tonnes of capacity at three new locations,
including expansion of its footprint by 3,000 tonnes in
Henan, the Middle Kingdom's No. 1 wheat-growing
January 2020 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

Photo courtesy of PT Bogasari

Indofood's
Bogasari Flour
Mills operates
the world's
largest mill with
11,650 tonnes of
daily production
capacity.

http://www.World-Grain.com

World Grain - January 2020

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