American agricultural group Cargill has announced to build transshipment and storage facilities for up to 300,000 metric tons of barley and malt in the Belgium port of Antwerp. The new facility, which will start operations in August 2018, is a partnership with Belgian logistics service provider Zuidnatie. The new partner already operates logistics sites for several commodities like metals, forest products, granite, minerals, chemicals, and heavy lift cargo in the Belgium port.
Cargill wants to serve its international customers through this hub with centralized services like loading, handling, packaging, storage of both barley and malt, and containerization. The logistics platform, which is designed especially for malt and barley, will be the connective link between the five European malting plants in Herent/Belgium, Salzgitter/Germany, Strasbourg/France, Swalman/The Netherlands and partly also Villaverde/Spain and overseas clients and is intended to strengthen Cargill’s export capabilities out of Europe.
The strategic location at the port of Antwerp and its connectivity with inland waterways will also favor more sustainable barge transport over truck transport. “We are very enthusiastic about this potential and believe we could reach a 30 percent increase of our water transport to our European plants,” says Sabine Sagaert, Global Managing Director Malt at Cargill.
Cargill has a combined malting capacity of about 2,000,000 tons in 17 malting plants in USA, Canada, Argentina, Australia and Europe, which puts Cargill on the third place of all commercial maltsters worldwide. The European business has so far suffered from partly unfavorable locations in regards to malt export. This disadvantage will now be softened or at least partly removed.
