Miller Magazine Issue: 115 July 2019

32 NEWS MILLER / JULY 2019 Bogasari Flour Mills cofounder Piet Yap dies at 89 Cofounder of the Indonesian Bogasari Flour Mills, world’s largest miller, and former Salim group execu- tive Piet Yap passed away on June 6, five months shy of his 90th birthday. He was a trusted advisor and friend of Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok since 1958, who re- cruited Yap from a Dutch commodity firm when Kuok was just starting to build his own commodity trading business. Yap was also instrumental in developing the alliance between Kuok and Salim Group’s late founder, Indonesian Sudono Salim (aka Liem Sioe Liong). The re- lationship between Kuok and Salim was critical for the later launch of the wheat flour business in Indonesia. Bogasari is an Indonesian wheat flour producer hav- ing a production capacity of 4 million tons per year, the largest in the world in a single location.Bogasari oper- ates four flour mills in Jakarta, Surabaya,Cibitung and Tangerang. A comprehensive range of flour products is sold under established brands such as Cakra Kembar, Segitiga Biru, Kunci Biru and Lencana Merah, while its convenient premix flour is branded under Chesa. Boga- sari also produces pasta for domestic and international markets under the La Fonte brand. Yap, who had a reputation as a savvy commodity trader, started out in sugar trading. He later cofounded Indonesia’s Bogasari Flour Mills and helped grow it into one of the biggest wheat flour millers in the world. In the process, he was credited for changing the eating habits of Indonesians from mostly rice to more flour- based products, such as noodles and dumplings. Described as a westernized Sumatran Chinese by Kuok in his memoir, the Malaysian sugar king tapped Yap’s language skills in Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia and English to help him do business in Indonesia. Yap was known for his ability to cultivate and maintain last- ing friendships with key business contacts in South- east Asia. In 2010, he released his autobiography, The Grains of My Life. FORBES Consolidated Grain and Barge to lease nine elevators from Agspring USA-based Consolidated Grain and Barge Co. (CGB), a leader in the grain and transportation industries since 1970 and operates 95 grain facilities across the Midwest, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to lease nine facilities located in the heart of the deep south from Big River Rice and Grain, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ag- spring. “We announced a managerial services agreement last year, and we are excited to provide even more service to the area’s producers through lease agreements in Eudora and Parkdale, AR, in addition to Pioneer, Dunn, Monticello, Hollybrook, Mer Rouge, Crowville and Lake Providence, LA,” said Greg Beck, Senior Vice President, CGB.“We are pleased that area producers will directly benefit from this transaction with CGB through their direct ties to the export markets,” said Agspring CEO Mark Beemer. “This transac- tion allows Agspring to focus on our value-added business- es including Thresher Artisan Wheat, Firebird Artisan Mills and Agforce Transport Services.” Big River Rice and Grain, formed in 2013 through acquisi- tion, is headquartered in Pioneer, Louisiana, centrally located among facilities in Dunn, Mer Rouge, Monticello, Hollybrook, Lake Providence, and Crowville, Louisiana, as well as Parkdale and Eudora, Arkansas. The company provides origination, storage and handling, logistics, marketing and risk manage- ment for corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and milo throughout the region for producers, processors and customers.