2012 Annual Report

Fundamentals in Food & Ingredients

Bunge test kitchen
The Bunge Center of Oil Excellence test kitchen in Bradley, Illinois
Academia Bunge Brazil
At the Academia Bunge in Brazil, customers learn about ingredient functionality
Adding oil to mixing bowl

We also produce our own consumer brands, leveraging demographic and nutritional trends to make products that capture additional value.

Bunge's food & ingredients business extends our core value chains in oilseeds and edible grains downstream into higher value products. The strategic role of food & ingredients within the Bunge portfolio is to deliver growth, improve returns and lessen the volatility of earnings.

In both grains and edible oils, we're building B2B platforms serving industrial food processors and food service companies. And in edible oils we have also moved down the chain into B2C markets that can offer strong growth and good returns.

The business has grown from its Brazilian and U.S. base to include operations in every region of the world, with a more balanced spread of volume, profit and opportunity. This global platform provides a springboard for further growth.

Customers are at the core of our approach. Food & ingredients works along the full value chain in an integrated fashion with Bunge's agribusiness in sourcing, processing, managing risk and sharing industrial footprints. This provides our customers reliable access to commodities and an assured supply of quality, food-safe ingredients. Our scale and integration, combined with production and sourcing flexibility, provide cost efficiencies. And our world-class oil and grains expertise, along with technical and innovation support, help enable our customers' growth plans.

We take a total value chain approach to working with our customers. In milling, we optimize product specification to the customer's production process. One example is a large commercial bakery in Brazil. We source, grade and blend wheat to deliver the customer a consistent specification. And then we work with their production teams to set their baking process to maximize efficiency and minimize waste.

In edible oils, we're the experts. We know how our ingredients work, and we cook with customers in our test kitchens to better understand their product formulations and the challenges they are facing. At our tasting and testing facility in Bradley, Illinois, we prepare products with customers who test their recipes and learn more about ingredient functionality and potential for future applications.

And we're expanding our edible oils expertise in other regions where we operate, including India. India is one of the largest markets in the world for vegetable oil, and its consumers are shifting increasingly to branded products for quality and food safety reasons. Last year, we completed our acquisition of Amrit Banaspati, which has some of India's best-selling brands. In addition to increasing our portfolio of products, the Amrit acquisition adds over 200,000 distribution points in the north and northeast of the country, and enables us to leverage our Masterline specialty bakery fats business in more regions.