Cargill's headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US. Photo courtesy of Cargill.

HULL, UNITED KINGDOM — Cargill has announced it will close its rapeseed crushing plant in Hull, United Kingdom, by the end of the year, citing “current market conditions.”

The plant has daily capacity to crush 750 tonnes of rapeseed.

Cargill has operated the facility since acquiring it from Croda Premier Oils in 1985. The facility closing will impact 36 jobs.

While rapeseed planted area in the UK is expected to increase in 2022-23, it is still well below historic levels due to the loss of pesticides, yield issues and volatile input costs, according to April's report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Planted area is forecast to increase 17% from the previous year to 359,000 hectares, but is still down from the high of 756,000 hectares in 2012.

Besides being the newest flour mill in the United States, the Ardent Mills flour mill built along the Gulf coast in metropolitan Tampa, Florida, US, has several details that set it apart. Advanced analytics, state-of-the-art equipment, unusually large grain storage capacity and unique supply chain capabilities are among the mill’s distinguishing features.

At 17,500 cwts of daily flour milling capacity, the Port Redwing mill is not Ardent Mills’ largest and is not among the 25 largest flour mills in the United States. With the capacity to receive large quantities of wheat, though, Ardent Mills constructed a large grain elevator at the Port Redwing mill, with 4.1 million bushels of storage capacity.

The elevator may be the largest ever built concurrent with the construction of a US flour mill and, according to the 2022 Grain & Milling Annual published by Sosland Publishing Co., it is the sixth largest elevator of any US flour mill currently operating. The concrete elevator includes 12, 50-foot-concrete bins with 300,000 bushels of grain storage apiece as well as a number of smaller grain bins.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the world’s wheat supply has been thrown into question, with poorer nations facing scarcity and a potential food crisis, according to the United Nations.

Following are countries among the world’s least developed that are the most dependent on Russia and Ukraine for their annual wheat supply (2020), according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Nations in Africa import 44% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine, according to the UN.

Sources:  unctad.org and  knoema.com/atlas.