Miller Magazine Issue: 116 August 2019

28 NEWS MILLER / AUGUST 2019 Turkey earns $22 billion from flour product exports in last decade Louis Dreyfus shakes up top trading jobs in turnaround bid Turkey has earned $22 billion by exporting flour products over the last decade, the head of the Turkish Flour Indus- trialists Federation (TFIF) said. The country gener- ated $10 billion of added value from $12 billion of wheat imports during the same period, Eren Gun- han Ulusoy told Anadolu Agency. Ulusoy said Turkey also tops the global flour export market with over 20% of all exports and came in second in the pasta export market. He said Turkey’s flour export, which was about 170,000 tons in 2001, rose by 20 times to reach 3.3 million tons last year. “Turkey exported $1 billion worth of flour while imported $1.1 billion worth of wheat. Our exports were $2.4 billion as a whole flour prod- uct group and our gross added value was about $1.4 billion last year,” said Ulusoy, who is also the director of the International As- sociation of Operative Millers (IAOM) Eurasia. He noted that Turkey is the eighth largest coun- try in wheat production with 19-20 million tons annually. However, he said the production could not meet the de- mand of flour products’ exports due to local consumption. “While there were 9.3 million hectares of wheat cultivation area in 2001, this area fell below 7 million hectares in 2019,” Ulusoy said.“If we had saved 9 million hectares of cultivated lands, the current yields would be more than 20 million tons, and there would be no need for import of wheat,” he added. Turkey has a total of 535 active flour factories in almost all 81 provinces, he noted. AA Louis Dreyfus Co. is shaking up top trading jobs as one of the world’s largest agricultural commodities merchants seeks to turn around its struggling business, according to internal memos seen by Bloomberg. The firm, led by Rus- sian billionaire heiress Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, has named new heads of soybeans, corn, wheat and meals as a part of a move to create a combined grains and oilseeds platform, it said in a memo. The company also brought in a new head of coffee and appointed a new leader to develop trading of other grains such as barley, sorghum and pulses. Agribusiness firms are fighting to make money in their traditional trading operations as years of well-supplied markets and low prices constrain activity and compress margins. Ian McIntosh, who last year became Louis Drey- fus’ fifth chief executive officer in five years, has said the firm was seeking partners to buy equity and help it expand in emerging markets. Louis Dreyfus declined to comment. Christopher Lush will be the new head of soybeans as Olivier Saur takes on meals, according to the memo. An- drew Ballentine becomes head of corn and Markus Reis takes on the role for wheat. Reis was previously head of the coffee platform and will be replaced by Mike Gelch- ie, who re-joins Dreyfus at the end of the month and will also be a member of the executive group, according to a separate memo. Wladimir Blanckaert takes the lead to develop com- plementary grains activities such as barley, sorghum and pulses. Dreyfus will also merge its palm and oils business into a single unit led by Jacinto Peralta Ramos and James Kilpatrick. Oilseed-related product lines will report to An- dre Roth and grain-related lines to Anthony Tancredi, ac- cording to the memo. BLOOMBERG