Latest Oils & Fats International News

New pesticides regarded as safe for bees could be causing harm to these vital pollinators when combined with fungicides being applied to crops, reported the Independent newspaper on 11 April.

Australia’s GrainCorp will be spinning off its malting business and integrating its grains and edible oils operations into a new business called New GrainCorp.

Just days after German pharmaceutical group Bayer lost its first Roundup weedkiller cancer test case in the USA, a French appeals court has ruled in favour of a French farmer who claimed to have been poisoned by a different herbicide owned by the company.

US-headquartered Vantage Specialty Chemicals has agreed to buy Textron Plimon SLU, a leading producer and processor of natural oils for the personal care, food and chemical industries.

The US soyabean area this year is expected to drop 2M ha to total 34.3M ha as a result of US farmers planting less of the crop, Germany’s oil and protein plants association, UFOP, reported on 4 April.

The Xylella fastidiosa bacterium that has wreaked havoc in Italy’s olive groves could also spread to Spain and other countries with a temperate climate, according to a study from Spain’s University of Málaga.

South Africa’s AFGRI Group Holdings (AGH) is creating a commodity/grain storage platform to expand the country’s current storage capacity from some 4.7M tonnes to 6M tonnes in the near future.

Surging biofuel demand from China and Europe has led to palm methyl ester (PME) exports from Indonesia and Malaysia climbing by more than 30% in the first quarter of this year, the Malaysian Reserve reported on 8 April.

Egypt’s soyabean imports are forecast to rise 14% in 2019/20 compared to 2018/19 as a result of its local crushing capacity increasing, according to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report on 4 April.

Italian extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) producer, Certified Origins Italia, is expanding its use of blockchain technology to track and trace its products, reported Enterprise Times on 1 April.

Global confectionery group Ferrero announced on 1 April that it had agreed to buy the cookie, fruit snack, ice cream cone and pie crust businesses of Kellogg Company for US$1.3bn.