In July 2008, Olam Group subsidiary Queensland Cotton opened a marketing office in Melbourne, Australia, to participate in the domestic wheat, barley and canola businesses. This represented Olam’s first foray into the global grains trade. With established networks and a strong end-market presence in the major wheat and barley destinations of Asia and Africa, Olam was ideally situated to support an origination grains team in Australia.

Olam was awarded bulk wheat export accreditation by Wheat Exports Australia (WEA) in October 2008, an important milestone towards achieving Olam’s strategic growth plans for exporting Australian wheat.

Olam’s wheat business exported over 150,000 MT of quality Australian wheat in its first year of operations to destinations including Vietnam and Japan. Olam’s Australian wheat business has now rapidly expanded into one of the major exporters of wheat from east coast Australia. Our customer base extends to Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Our pulse business, Mt Tyson Seeds, is a key source of wheat, barley and canola from the farm-gate. We work closely with our growers, ensuring the quality of wheat, barley and canola that they grow will fulfil our domestic and export customer requirements as well as ensuring that the best possible prices are given back to the Australian grower. This involves continued investment into growing both our grains bulk and container export programs.

Olam is committed to maintaining a long term interest in the global grains trade. Aside from the investment in Australian grains industry, Olam has also committed to investing in flour milling assets, purchasing Crown Flour Mills in Nigeria in 2010 and building a new flour mill in Ghana in 2011. The technical expertise gleaned from these acquisitions has assisted the Australian grains business to gain a better understanding of the milling requirements of our Asian customers who value a consistent Australian product. By establishing key export pathways, this will continue to allow us to meet the needs of our international customers.