Miller Magazine Issue: 113 May 2019

42 NEWS MAY 2019 Bunge appoints acting CEO Gregory Heckman as new chief executive Bunge Ltd named Gregory He- ckman as its new chief executi- ve officer, three months after he stepped in as acting CEO at the embattled global grains merchant stung by slumping grain prices and a bruising U.S.-China trade war.Heckman, a founding partner of private investment firm Flatwa- ter Partners and the former chief executive of grains trader Gavilon Group, was appointed acting CEO in January after long-serving CEO Soren Schroder was removed. The leadership change follows a turbulent period for the two-cen- tury-old company as profits in its core grain trading, handling and processing business thinned due to a global supply glut and a U.S.-China trade war that redrew global commodity flows. Heckman joined the Bunge board late last year as part of a deal to ease activist investor pressure on the company following a string of weak results that made Bunge vulnerable to takeover attempts by rival Archer Daniels Midland Co and global commodities trader Glencore Plc.The appointment of Heckman, who headed Gavilon in 2012 when it was sold to Japane- se trading house Marubeni, is li- kely to stoke market expectations for large merger and acquisition deals involving Bunge and its ri- vals, including an outright sale of the company, said Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein. Bunge has been undergoing a strategic review of its businesses and has not ruled out a sale of the company. “It leaves the option on the table, whereas Bunge management previously had been re- sistant to being acquired or even wanting to discuss that with potential acquirers,” Goldstein said. Gregory Heckman CBH upgrades grain storage CBH Group, Australia’s largest co-operative and a leader in the Australian grain industry, is rolling out its biggest permanent storage upgrade program in history with the grain hand- ler signing off on th- ree major construction contracts in April, The West reports. Broome- hill, Lake Grace, Gaird- ner, Dowerin, McLevie, Wickepin, Narngulu, Cranbook and Dulyalbin are in line for upgrades ranging from 60,000 to 236,000 tonnes. CBH unveiled the $150 million plan in April, revealing it would upgrade the nine sites with more than 700,000 tonnes of storage, combined, by harvest.Once comple- te, CBH’s permanent network storage would be more than 1.45 million, 650,000 of which was installed last year ahead of WA’s second-biggest harvest.CBH proje- ct delivery general manager Andrew Porter, said work would be complete between July and September. “It’s important to listen to what our harvest is telling us,” he said. “A lot the sites we are building this year have been what I would refer to as ‘heavily subscribed’ or ‘oversubscribed’ and we could see the sites that nee- ded the expansion.” The works mark the phase of CBH’s $750 million Network Strategy, which was announced in 2016 and included a plan to create “100 super bins” in WA.CBH has spruiked the strategy as a way to focus its attention on the 100 grain receival sites that receive 90 per cent of the State’s average crop. CBH’s storage and handling system currently receives and exports around 90 per cent of the Western Australian grain harvest and is regarded as one of the best in the world. THE WEST