Cargill Profile

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Cargill expands in Poland

Cargill has completed the expansion of its Polish wheat processing facility, designed to meet consumer demand across the European bloc. This is the company’s latest expansion in Europe. In March it opened a new wheat processing plant in Manchester, UK, to produce wheat glucose for sweeteners, having transformed the plant from processing imported maize to processing domestic wheat.

Cargill lsaid the expansion of the Wroclow factory was carried out because Poland is a vital European centre for Cargill, and has been since 1991."We now employ nearly a thousand people in ten locations in the country, and Poland is a very significant country for Cargill's food and feed operations particularly in Eastern Europe."

The expansion to will allow the company to grind wheat on-site, which will then be used to produce sweeteners such as glucose and fructose for food industries such as bakery, confectionery and beverage.
The majority of these products will be exported throughout Central, Eastern and Western Europe. The company also claimed that, as in the UK, Cargill will support local farmers by sourcing the majority of its wheat in the region.

The company has also developed its ethanol line to provide wheat gluten for the food and animal feed industries, the majority of which is exported to the US. Vital wheat gluten is an insoluble protein that has been separated from the starch and other soluble components of wheat flour. It has a range of applications for the bakery market such as breads, rolls, pizza, tortillas, frozen foods, and noodles.

Cargill is one of the most prolific ingredients firms across the European bloc, with processing plants in countries such as France, Ireland, Spain and the Ukraine. Cargill was also one of the first Western corporations to attempt to penetrate the Eastern European market after the fall of communism, opening its first Russian office in the early nineties. Activities in the country now include the supply of food and agricultural commodities as well as financial market activities.

– from foodproductiondaily.com, 24/4/08

For background on Cargill’s activity in Poland, see Invisible Giant, second edition, Zed Books, 2002, pp 70-72