A farmer-owned company raising money to invest in west coast grain handling says it’s about halfway toward its fundraising target.
Farmers of North America is holding public and private meetings across the Prairies to try to convince more farmers to join the project.
“I’m happy with where we are, but at the same time I was hoping we might be a little further ahead,” said FNA vice-president Glenn Caleval.
The company has extended its original fundraising deadline of Jan. 12 and will decide by the end of the month whether it can go ahead as a farmer-only project or whether it will need to seek other sources of funds.
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“We have to pick a drop-dead point, beyond which we have to decide if we’re not going to have enough farmer participation and then have to make up our minds to pursue some other way,” said Caleval.
He declined to say how much money has been raised so far, but FNA has previously said it wanted to raise $15 to $25 million.
Nor will the company identify specifically what it wants to do with the money, but it’s generally thought to be interested in buying the Agricore United grain terminal being sold by a trustee appointed by the federal Competition Bureau.
A year ago the company publicly asked farmers to indicate whether they would be willing to deliver grain through an FNA-owned terminal at the port.
The company recently established the FNA Export Terminal Corp., selling memberships to farmers for $15 per unit. Each unit gives the owner the right to a service fee refund on one tonne of grain shipped through the corporation. The company projects a refund of around $7 per tonne per year.
The initial membership is non-binding. All money goes into a trust fund and will be refunded if the project doesn’t go ahead.
Caleval said the objective is to finance the project through farmer memberships.
“The entire point of this is to get some of those terminal service fees back into the farmers’ pockets,” he said.
If the farmer fundraising falls short, then FNA will pursue other options, such as seeking investment from farmer-owned inland terminals, grain-related organizations or non-farmer groups if necessary, to make up any financing shortfall.
One other group, which counts several inland terminals among its members, has also publicly expressed interest in buying the Vancouver terminal.
The AU terminal was ordered to be sold by the federal Competition Bureau in 2002, after the bureau decided the merger of Agricore and United Grain Growers gave the newly created AU too big a share of the Vancouver grain handling market.
The sale was put in the hands of a bureau-appointed trustee in May 2006. The trustee has refused to make public statements about the sale process.
