Dive Brief:
- Cargill says it will close its corn mill in Memphis in January. Some 440 jobs will be lost, but employees will be offered work at other nearby Cargill operations.
- Cargill said that the plant was underutilized and stood too far outside the Corn Belt to be justified.
- The announcement to close the mill comes just two months after the company said it would close an underutilized slaughterhouse in Milwaukee.
Dive Insight:
The decision to shutter the mill comes comes only weeks after Cargill said it would build a new grain terminal outside Memphis to process a variety of crops for export. But of course corn exports may not be particularly plentiful from that location. Cargill says corn exports have been crippled by Syngenta's decision to sell a GMO seed to U.S. farmers that is not approved for use overseas.