Chapter 365 Golmud; What does ADM want to do?
months ago.

Qinghai in summer is full of golden colors.

In the early autumn of harvest, the aroma of oil fills the air.

This high, cold and clean land has natural advantages such as a "cool" climate, sufficient sunlight, and few pests and diseases, which nourish every rapeseed plant.

This is also the first province in the country to carry out spring rapeseed breeding and research.

Thanks to the scientific and technological research of generations, several hybrid rapeseed varieties have been developed here, and it has become the main planting area of ​​spring rapeseed in China.

Rapeseed also has the largest planting area among the six major crop varieties in Qinghai Province.

It is also here that the world record for rapeseed yield will be born in the future: 450.45 kilograms!

At Xiangride Farm in Delingha in the eastern part of the Qaidam Basin, the rapeseed yield and quality are surprisingly good this year.

High oil yield has always been the advantage of rapeseed in Qinghai Province, which is five or six percentage points higher than the national average, or even more.

The oil yield of Xiangride's rapeseed is even better this year.

After a simple investigation, the agricultural reclamation department found out that the reason was the seeds.

On land outside of agricultural reclamation, this cabbage-type spring rapeseed variety from Tianhe has been promoted in a larger area.

Generally speaking, the yield has increased.

In the western part of the Qaidam Basin is the Golmud Farm, the largest farm under the Agricultural Reclamation Bureau.

Large areas of alfalfa are planted on the secondary saline-alkali land on the east and west sides of the Golmud River.

This move was made at the suggestion of Professor of Grass Science Weng Lixin.

In the Qaidam Basin, what is most abundant are various saline-alkali wastelands, saline-alkali farmlands, and saline-alkali forests and grasslands.

Alfalfa No. 1 also plays an extremely valuable role here.

The ecology of Qaidam is fragile, but it has an enviable grassland area, with the agricultural grassland area alone exceeding 500 million mu.

But grass production is low and livestock carrying capacity is extremely low.

The development of the alfalfa industry and the increase in hay production have also brought vitality to the local animal husbandry.

There is even surplus fodder, which can be transported from Golmud to LS, Delingha and Xining via the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which was opened only two years ago.

Jiahe also brings high-yield and high-quality forage, but it is much more than that.

Tianhe's seed collection team is active here, and the rich halophyte resources enrich Tianhe's treasure house.

Tianhe Science Academy has established a breeding station here to carry out breeding of crops such as rapeseed, Chinese cabbage, vegetables and various exotic plants.

It may seem insignificant, but after the agricultural reclamation investigation, it was discovered that the family's assets had been thoroughly explored.

This led to the trip to Jiuquan by Du Jianwen, chairman of Qinghai Provincial Agricultural Reclamation Group, and his delegation.

Du Jianwen is a middle-aged man with a decent appearance. He was very heroic when he was young. He is also very talkative and makes people feel warm and welcoming.

He has not been the chairman of the board of directors of the agricultural reclamation company for long, and he was not originally engaged in agriculture.

It was shifted from transportation to agriculture.

After chatting for a while, both sides tacitly discussed future cooperation.

Jiahe had had ideas about Qaidam a long time ago, but the conditions were not ripe, and in fact it is not fully ready now.

But there is not much time to prepare.

The location of the cooperation was naturally placed in the Qaidam Basin, Golmud and Delingha farms.

After the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was opened to traffic, Golmud and Delingha have changed a lot.

The golden tourist route of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau attracts tourists from home and abroad, including white snow-capped mountains and cascading canyons. Tourism has become a pillar industry in Qinghai and Tibet provinces.

Guo Yang is very interested in Golmud.

This is the logistics support base for materials entering Tibet. At the same time, most of the vegetables and grains for industrial and mining enterprises in the snow-covered areas and some areas also come from Golmud.

Regardless of whether Hongqi River can be implemented, Guo Yang is consciously moving in this direction.

Finally, the two sides reached a cooperation intention in the fields of seed breeding, organic agriculture, alfalfa industry, salt lake agriculture, ecological management, and oil processing.

Du Jianwen was extremely satisfied with this conversation. He didn't expect Jiahe to be so easy to talk to.

The investment environment in Qaidam is too bad!
Humans do play a certain role. After all, the workers in the agricultural reclamation are extremely poor, and some of them are ethnic groups that often cause trouble.

But the most difficult thing is the geographical factors. Drought, high altitude, lack of oxygen, salinity, Gobi, desert... With all these factors combined, most people don't even have time to run.

And Jiahe seemed to have thought of it all in advance. When he proposed to establish a cooperative relationship, Jiahe was already able to come up with various specific investment directions.

During the few days in Jiuquan, Du Jianwen saw the salt-alkali control in Jiahe, river channel improvement, and biological control of natural enemies... It was an eye-opener.

But what he is most interested in is 'seafood'.

"Mr. Guo, I now know why Jiahe wants to develop salt lake agriculture in Qaidam." Du Jianwen said with sudden enlightenment: "At first, I thought you were interested in potash fertilizer."

"Jiahe also has investments in potash fertilizers," Guo Yang said, "but Jiahe is more interested in raising aquaculture in salt lakes."

There are 51 lakes in the Qaidam Basin, of which there is only 1 freshwater lake and 7 brackish-salty lakes, and the rest are salt lakes.

Guo Yang is also no stranger to the originator of salt lake agriculture. Yang Guocheng’s teacher Zheng Mianping is an academician in the field of geology.

As soon as it was proposed, it attracted the attention of Qian Xuesheng. Just like his emphasis on the sand industry, this scientist believed that salt lake agriculture also had important strategic significance.

But in fact, salt lake agriculture only includes the breeding, planting and high-value processing of salt plants and animals, and has nothing to do with potash fertilizer.

But who can blame potash fertilizer for being so popular in the past two years? Qaidam is one of the regions with the richest potash fertilizer resources in China.

Guo Yang smiled and said, "I am also particularly interested in 'seafood'."

When Du Jianwen and his party ate the giant crabs produced by Jiahe in Jiuquan, they couldn't help but sigh in admiration.

“The meat is tender and firm, the crab roe is rich and the taste is delicious.”

“Is this suitable for Qaidam?”

"Qaidam is the most suitable place," Guo Yang said. "Cold-water crabs can fully adapt to the salt lake environment of Qaidam, and the environment is clean, so we can definitely go for the quality route."

"I'm going to take him back."

"Remember to sell it to Jiahe when the time comes."

Du Jianwen thinks Jiahe is too friendly and there seems to be nothing in his family that is worth Jiahe's concern!
"must."

"Also, those two stone pickers have been used by the farm for five or six years. It's time to return them."

"..."

If the agricultural reclamation in Qinghai Province was going smoothly, then for ADM this trip was not bad, but it was certainly not satisfactory.

They didn't even meet the person who actually controlled Jiahe.

This time their team consisted of Chief Financial Officer Usman, Global Vice President Wim Cromwell, President of the Feed Division and others.

Definitely come with sincerity.

However, Golden Harvest stated that there was no room for negotiation regarding the acquisition of OmniKing.

In fact, acquisition and being acquired are common occurrences among international grain traders.

For example, Cargill once sold some of its feed factories in Europe, but then turned around and wanted to acquire Provimi.

Whether it can be sold depends on whether there is any profit to be made.

But when it comes to control over the Omni-King, Jiahe will not give in at all.

The reason why ADM is interested in Quanwang is that their ADM Animal Health and Nutrition Company in Dalian specializes in providing breeding feed for various livestock, poultry and fisheries, and is a domestic first-line professional premix manufacturer.

Even though ADM no longer has the advantage of importing raw materials in China, its facility scale and production capacity remain.

Like other grain traders, ADM has chosen to embrace domestic soybeans.

This is the only base they have left in China.

Before the emergence of Quanwang, ADM, like Cargill, was an important domestic supplier of amino acids and feed additives.

Cargill is methionine.

ADM feed-grade lysine and threonine are widely used by domestic manufacturers.

These are high-value products converted from grain raw materials, and in the past the country basically relied entirely on imports.

But now there are alternatives: Quanwang’s Chinese herbal medicine and PFA supplements, which are significantly more effective in animal intestines.

General feed additives can easily cause overnutrition and lead to diarrhea in livestock, but Quanwang’s Chinese herbal products can completely solve this problem.

Cargill, ADM and other companies have long been aware of the advantages of plant additives and have also conducted related research and development.

But no one expected that the King of All would appear halfway.

And it has gradually ignited the market.

This made ADM extremely uncomfortable.

The national grain industry has turned against the government, grain trade has come to a standstill, and high-profit animal nutrition products are facing the impact of emerging products.

The business in China has been shrinking again and again, and grain production in North America has suffered a major blow. The profits in the third quarter report have been halved compared to the crazy first quarter.

Although the world food crisis has not been completely alleviated, ADM has not suffered from this crisis from beginning to end. The cost of food production in North America is rising, while international food prices are falling, and ADM's main business is in North America.

This caused them to suffer a series of setbacks in the second half of the year, with their stock prices falling endlessly.

After the financial crisis, the U.S. federal government introduced a $7000 billion financial rescue plan, and the stock market quickly emerged from the crisis.

But this has little to do with ADM. As the stock price continued to fall, ADM's board of directors frequently put pressure on the management led by Wools.

ADM doesn't have many ways to break out.

In order to achieve real trade in agriculture, it is necessary to occupy the world's agricultural product producing countries in order to ensure profits.

North America is temporarily crippled, and South America is the traditional sphere of influence of Cargill, Bunge, Monsanto, etc., which needs to be infiltrated slowly.

China is a new exporter. Although ADM is also lagging behind, the advantage over traditional international grain traders is not so great as to make people despair.

During the negotiations, Wim Cromwell kept raising his offer.

From the initial US$15 billion, it increased all the way to US$25 billion, US$30 billion...even allowing Golden Harvest to raise the price themselves.

Miao Lan, the leader of Jiahe, was not moved at all.

"Wim, if we continue to talk about the Omni-King creatures, I don't think there is any need to continue the conversation."

Miao Lanchun began to pack up the documents.

“Although it’s a little hard to accept that we can’t acquire Quanwang,” Wim Cromwell said helplessly, “ADM does intend to engage in grain trade with Jiahe.”

“Why not national grain?”

"We encountered some problems, so we came to Jiahe."

Miao Lanchun keenly noticed the changes in the expressions of several of them, and there must be some inside story that Jiahe didn't know.

ADM has trading partners all over the world, but the amount of food available for export in North America is decreasing, while China's production is increasing. The battlefield for food sources is shifting domestically.

Grain traders can stab you in the back, but can also cooperate with a smile the next moment.

After internal research and analysis, Jiahe Grain and Oil also has the inclination to cooperate with international grain traders. The trade volume of hundreds of millions of tons is not so easy to digest, and overseas sales channels are still insufficient.

The cooperation was easily reached, and Golden Harvest also took the opportunity to gain some other bargaining chips.

For example, some technology transfers and patent authorizations in biofuels.

ADM is the world's largest producer of activated fuel ethanol and ranks first in the world in terms of technological accumulation in this area.

Some seemingly ordinary technologies are enough to drive Jiahe to make great progress in the extraction of oils from jatropha and Xanthoceras sorbifolia.

But behind this, Guo Yang also has other purposes. Only by being familiar enough with an opponent can he know how to destroy it.

"Do you think Golden Harvest might acquire ADM?"

"Ah?" Miao Lanchun thought she was hallucinating. After confirming it again and again, she found that the boss was asking the question very seriously.

Guo Yang said: "ADM's market value is not that high, only about 100 to 200 billion US dollars."

"It's very difficult." Miao Lanchun blinked uneasily. Only you can say it's not difficult.

“The sales of the four major grain traders exceed US$100 billion year-round, and the volatility is huge.”

"Let's contact them privately. There's no rush."

From ADM's performance, Guo Yang could feel that the other party was a little anxious.

Its sales revenue in the first half of the year was approximately US$698 billion. Guo Yang did not pay attention to the third quarter report, but it certainly would not be good.

You want to acquire Quanwang, and I also want to acquire you. Geely has been planning to acquire Volvo for several years, and Jiahe can also give it a try.

Miao Lanchun suddenly said: "ADM is not also planning to acquire it."

"Damn, it's possible!" Guo Yang was amazed by the shocking mergers and acquisitions in later generations, such as DuPont and Dow Chemical, Bayer and Monsanto, China National Chemical Corporation and Syngenta.

Each one has a profound impact.

Where do mergers and acquisitions come from?
Also for the sake of survival and competitiveness, the financial crisis will cause a sharp drop in global demand for commodities in the next few years.

Now ADM is facing a crisis. The core of its business is grain trading, but it wants to acquire OmniKing. The more he thinks about it, the more he seems to think something is wrong.

Guo Yang convened an impromptu video conference with Gao De, Chen Yanqiu, Chen Yun and others.

“Could ADM be planning to acquire Jiahe Grain and Oil?”

Gaode proposed an idea, but it was immediately rejected by Guo Yang, saying that Jiahe is a private company.

“It’s impossible to buy Guoliang. It’s almost the same as ADM selling its shares in Guoliang.”

"Wait." Chen Yanqiu suddenly spoke.

Miao Lanchun looked at the Singaporean and said, "You don't think the national grain can really be purchased, but it is possible to buy a few factories."

"No." Chen Yanqiu groaned, "I mean ADM is going to sell its shares in the joint venture with Guoliang!"

"Sell?"

“It’s his only outlet.”

“But ADM came to Golden Harvest, it’s very likely that they want to break up, and ADM has other acquisition targets.”

Chen Yanqiu was certain, “Wilmar International!”

It was quiet for a while.

"MD, maybe it's true!"

"Wilmar's performance this year did not meet expectations." Gao De quickly recalled: "In 2006, Wilmar's revenue was 70.16 billion US dollars, and in 2007, it was 164.661 US dollars. The Chinese market accounted for an absolute proportion of its business regional composition."

"Due to domestic public opinion, Wilmar originally planned to split its domestic business and list it separately as a domestic company."

“But this year Wilmar’s upward momentum came to an abrupt halt, with revenue at best remaining the same as last year! And the tide has turned!”

Everyone present here knows the reasons for Wilmar's decline.

In addition to Jiahe Grain and Oil, it is also closely related to the changes in the domestic supply and demand relationship of raw materials.

Wilmar is a Malaysian palm oil giant. Its operating methods are similar to those of the four major grain traders. It transfers the profits of edible oil to overseas plantations through tax avoidance.

Its oil palm plantations in Malaysia remain very profitable, with profits even higher than Bunge.

However, the situation in its largest business market region is not good, with price wars and public opinion crises, and its raw material advantage based on ADM is gone.

If he can’t avoid taxes or transfer profits, then what advantages does he have?
Factory capacity counts as one, palm oil counts as one, but what about the others?
Jiahe Grain and Oil and Guoliang, playing at home, can beat him into a Muggle!

Also, once the price war stops and it becomes profitable, some small brands and workshops will let you experience the Chinese style of internal circulation.

Although Wilmar’s palm oil business seems to be relatively stable, it is also facing increasing competition in Malaysia and Indonesia!
It was as if everything was understood.

Everyone at the meeting became more and more convinced that ADM and Wilmar International were getting together again and were planning something big.

...

Entering the last month of 08, the branches of the sea buckthorn trees were covered with a layer of white snow, but the sea buckthorn fruits were still bright yellow.

After the visits from Laos, Qinghai Province Agricultural Reclamation and ADM, the headquarters of Jiahe Group has become more and more lively.

Various industry conferences are held one after another.

Tianhe held a corn seed industry summit, followed by the 08-09 distribution conference.

Not to be outdone, Muhe organized an industry meeting with its close cooperative enterprises to formulate a development plan for next year.

After the industry conference, overseas partners from island countries, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries also visited us one after another.

The snow did not completely cover the alfalfa, but instead highlighted the extraordinary nature of this cold-resistant forage grass.

The meeting was harmonious.

We have a rough idea of ​​the intention to sign a contract, approximate demand, etc.

Due to the weakening of alfalfa exports from the United States, the alfalfa industry cluster in the Hexi Corridor is currently the global alfalfa industry highland.

In addition, relevant meetings were also held on water-saving drip irrigation, agricultural machinery, dairy industry, etc.

During this period, Yu Honghai, who was far away in Africa, also came back once, and with him was Eddie, the great chief of the Equatoria Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Jiahe's oil palm base in Equatoria Province has also entered the substantive signing stage.

Throughout December, various business people came and went at Jiayuguan Airport, and citizens also noticed that there were more international figures in the city.

Qin Lijun smiles more often and can often be seen at various industry conferences.

Moreover, he felt that he was very outstanding and could speak for an hour or two without any pause.

After a meeting, Guo Yang was drinking tea and couldn't help but say, "Leader, your speech is like a leader!"

Qin Lijun raised his eyebrows. The person next to him always did things perfunctorily, which was completely different from his style.

"Do you think I'm being long-winded?"

"You said it yourself."

"Hey..." Qin Lijun couldn't do anything with him and had to keep him as a worshipper. Fortunately, his addiction was over.

The good thing about him is that he listens to advice.

(End of this chapter)