South & West Latin America

Global Markets supported our commercial activities across the Region, helping to mitigate risk in a challenging environment and accurately navigating the Argentine foreign exchange market before mid-term presidential elections.

Coffee performed well in Honduras and Mexico, benefiting from the positive effects of our coffee mill renovation in Villanueva, Honduras and operational efficiencies in Mexico. We faced a more challenging environment in Colombia, given high international and domestic price increases throughout the country’s coffee sector, which led to defaults along the local supply chain.

In Mexico, we installed a new photovoltaic system covering 80% of energy needs with solar power at El Cofre coffee plant in Perote, Veracruz, contributing to LDC’s sustainability goals. We also invested over US$400,000 to introduce safer, more efficient bagging technology at this site, as well as at La Calera coffee warehouse in Perote, Veracruz.

In Honduras, we invested over US$250,000 in coffee sustainability programs toward responsible supply chains, for the benefit of both producers and customers. As a result, we more than doubled the exported volumes of our own responsibly sourced coffee.

As the global market recovered from the early impacts of the pandemic, the Cotton Platform once again delivered outstanding results, successfully marketing Argentine bales to key customers and destinations.

Through our pioneering export of soybean oil certified under the US Environmental Protection Agency scheme, we consolidated our position as responsible merchants while capturing business opportunities presented by increased demand for certified products.

We made substantial year-on-year progress by transforming 40% more grains and oilseeds crush waste from our General Lagos and Timbúes plants in Argentina into lecithin, producing record volumes. We also rolled out our global asset improvement project – ‘Industry 4.0’ – at these sites, driving significant energy and gas consumption savings.

With a total investment of US$2,7 million, the substantial expansion works at our Grains & Oilseeds Campo Largo facility in El Chaco, Argentina, included the installation of two new grains silos as well as the construction of a rail bypass to facilitate transport logistics at the site.

We sold our first vessel of crude glycerin produced in General Lagos, Argentina in 2021, leveraging good US refining margins, with more glycerin sales planned in 2022.