What’s Inside:
Deep Dive - Schreiber Foods Files to Buy Real Dairy Australia and Leaves the Wauchope Plant Out
Minerva Foods Restarts Going-Private Talks With Saudi Fund Salic
Cargill's Fiscal First-Quarter Net Income Falls 52 Percent
BerQ RNG Buys Sevana's Rialto Plant and a Manure Project Pipeline
Aurora Coop Secures R$300 Million BNDES Export Credit
CoBank: Beef-on-Dairy Returns Are Expanding the U.S. Dairy Herd
Schreiber Foods, the employee-owned Wisconsin dairy maker with more than $7 billion in sales, is in talks to buy Paul Lederer's Real Dairy Australia, AFR reported on October 4. The ACCC filing, notified September 30, covers Get Real Foods Pty Ltd and carves out the Wauchope, New South Wales cheese plant. Real Dairy has about A$600 million in revenue and sells into Woolworths, Coles, Subway, and Domino's. Bega, Saputo, Lactalis, and Fonterra already compete there, and a cleared deal would put a U.S. private-label maker on that converting floor.
Minerva Foods Restarts Going-Private Talks With Saudi Fund Salic
Minerva Foods is again in talks with Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company about taking the Brazilian beef processor private, NeoFeed reported on October 9. A prior attempt in May did not advance. Net debt was about R$14.4 billion at midyear, or roughly 2.9 times trailing EBITDA, after the R$7.5 billion Marfrig plant purchase. JBS and Marfrig already hold Brazilian beef scale inside larger structures, so a Salic deal would test whether Minerva can refinance that leverage off the public tape.
Cargill's Fiscal First-Quarter Net Income Falls 52 Percent
Cargill's net income fell to $927 million in the quarter ended August 31, from $1.94 billion a year earlier, according to accounts Bloomberg reported on October 5. Higher cattle costs and cocoa mark-to-market losses weighed on results, while soy and canola crushing posted record margins after higher U.S. biofuel blending targets. The year-ago quarter also included a large tax benefit. Tyson, JBS, and National Beef face the same tight U.S. cattle herd when they buy fed cattle, so the packer squeeze is not Cargill's alone.
BerQ RNG Buys Sevana's Rialto Plant and a Manure Project Pipeline
BerQ RNG, backed by Lotus Infrastructure Partners, said on October 6 it bought Sevana Bioenergy assets, including the Rialto, California digester and manure RNG projects in Idaho, California, and Kansas. Rialto is designed for up to 1,000 tons of feedstock a day and up to 1 million MMBtu of RNG a year into the SoCalGas system. Terms were not disclosed. This is a different Sevana sale from last week's CalBio South Dakota deal, and it exits Ontario Teachers from the California plant.
Aurora Coop Secures R$300 Million BNDES Export Credit
Aurora Coop, Brazil's third-largest animal protein cooperative, secured R$300 million from BNDES under a Giro Exportação line to diversify frozen pork and poultry shipments, Agrimidia reported on October 7. The credit is meant to reduce reliance on Middle East routes and open more Asia-Pacific and secondary Gulf volume. JBS and Minerva already dominate Brazilian protein exports, so cheaper state-backed working capital is how a co-op keeps lanes open when a rival can reprice freight and customer risk faster.
CoBank: Beef-on-Dairy Returns Are Expanding the U.S. Dairy Herd
CoBank said on October 7 that strong prices for beef-on-dairy calves have helped push the U.S. dairy cow herd up by 319,000 head in 20 months, past 9.7 million. Newborn beef-on-dairy calves still fetch about $1,300, down from a $2,000 peak but far above the roughly $200 level common before 2023. Cull cows and calves now contribute a much larger share of dairy-farm revenue in regions CoBank cites, while milk checks cover more of the cost base. Processors adding capacity in Texas, Kansas, and the I-29 corridor are the other pull on cow numbers, alongside calf checks.