From the editors of Feedstuffs
Novozymes, Chr. Hansen to mergeto create global biosolutions group
Novozymes and Chr. Hansen have entered into an agreement to create a leading global biosolutions partner through a statutory merger of the two companies. In the announcement Monday, the firms stated that the "combination is expected to unleash the full potential of biological solutions and generate significant value for all stakeholders and society at large."
Novozymes is a world leader in biological solutions and the world's largest provider of enzyme and microbial technologies. Chr. Hansen is a global, differentiated bioscience company with over 145 years' experience developing natural ingredient solutions for the food, nutritional, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.
"The combination of two strategically complementary companies with a shared purpose and advanced capabilities will show the world the true power of biosolutions," said Ester Baiget, president and CEO of Novozymes. "Today's announcement is fully aligned with Novozymes' strategy and is another step towards unlocking additional growth opportunities. Novozymes and Chr. Hansen share the strong conviction that our combined scale, know-how, commercial strengths, and innovation excellence will drive value for our shareholders, customers, and society at large by providing the sustainable solutions the world so urgently needs."Read more
USDA investing additional $325m in climate-smart pilot projects
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced this week that the Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing an additional $325 million for 71 projects under the second funding pool of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities effort, bringing the total investment from both funding pools to over $3.1 billion for 141 tentatively selected projects. Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities is working to expand markets for American producers who produce climate-smart commodities, leverage greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart production, and provide meaningful benefits to producers..
Read moreTennessee Tech opens new Poultry Science Research CenterTennessee Tech University recently celebrated the grand opening of their Poultry Science Research Center, as well as the official naming of the Aviagen Poultry Science Laboratory inside. The new facility, which will give faculty and students in the college of agriculture and human ecology access to cutting edge technology, was made possible through a number of supporters throughout the state.This new facility is located on the grounds of Tech’s Shipley Farm and includes two 30-foot-by-200-foot poultry research barns, a feed mill, a processing plant, a commercial kitchen, a hatchery and a classroom.Read more
Louis Dreyfus company creates new Food & Feed Solutions Platform
Louis Dreyfus Company B.V. (LDC) has announced the creation of a new Food & Feed Solutions Platform (or business line) within its value chain segment from January 2023, to address favorable market trends and customer preferences toward healthy, nature-based products. The new platform will focus on developing and growing LDC’s presence in the lecithin, glycerin and specialty feed protein space, leveraging the group’s strong raw material origination and processing capabilities.
“Demand growth for ingredients of natural origin is accelerating, fueled by increasing use in functional foods, nutraceutical products, personal care products and other non-food and industry applications,” said Michael Gelchie, LDC’s chief executive officer.“As part of LDC’s strategic plans for revenue diversification through more value-added products, we see an opportunity to participate in this rapidly growing nature-based ingredients market,” said Gelchie.With its global asset network and market presence, LDC said the group is well placed to scale up its participation in the nature-based ingredients market, both through organic growth of production capacity and through targeted acquisitions and investments to diversify and expand the geographic scope of its portfolio.Read more
WTO: Stop adopting new trade-restrictive measuresThe WTO Director-General’s annual overview of developments in the international trading environment shows that trade restrictions are increasing in a context of economic uncertainty exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the food security crisis. According to the latest WTO Trade Monitoring Report, WTO members are introducing restrictions at an increased pace, particularly on food, feed, and fertilizers. The stockpile of import restrictions in force also continues to grow.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called on WTO members to refrain from adopting new trade-restrictive measures, particularly export restrictions, that can further contribute to a worsening of the global economic outlook and urged them to cooperate to keep markets open and predictable in order to allow goods to move around the world to where they are needed.
“Members have increasingly implemented new trade restrictions, in particular on the export side, first in the context of the pandemic and more recently in the context of the war in Ukraine and the food security crisis. Although some of these export restrictions have been lifted, many others persist,” she said. “Out of the 78 export restrictive measures on food, feed, and fertilizers introduced since the start of the war in late February, 58 are still in place, covering roughly $56.6 billion of trade. These numbers have increased since mid-October, which should be a cause for concern.”
She added, “As I told G20 Leaders at their summit in Indonesia a few weeks ago, lifting those export restrictions is fundamental to reduce price spikes and volatility and to allow goods to flow to where they are urgently needed.”During the review period for the report, from mid-October 2021 to mid-October 2022, WTO members introduced more trade-facilitating (376) than trade-restrictive (214) measures on goods (unrelated to the pandemic), with the average number of trade-facilitating measures per month at its highest since 2012. Most of the facilitation happened on the import side while most of the restrictions were on the export side. For the first time since the beginning of the monitoring exercise in 2009, the number of export restrictions outpaced that of import restrictions.
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