Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), an international private equity firm focused on investing across the African continent, today announced a U.S. $30 million initial investment in Salt Investment S.A. (SI). The company is a new Djibouti-based salt production and export company that will harvest, wash and export salt extracted from Lake Assal, the largest undeveloped salt [...]

Cargill Inc., the largest U.S. agriculture company, reached an agreement with Brazil’s MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA to export pig iron made with ore from MMX’s Corumba mine.
Under the agreement, Wayzata, Minnesota-based Cargill will have exclusive rights to sell pig iron made at MMX’s mine and iron-smelting complex in Corumba, Brazil, to customers outside South [...]

A new Cargill Inc. subsidiary announced plans Monday to build four ethanol plants in the Midwest, each with an annual capacity of 100 million gallons.
The plants will almost triple the ethanol production capacity Cargill directly owns, Cargill spokesman Bill Brady said. Combined with service agreements Cargill has with independently owned ethanol plants, they’ll give Cargill [...]

A new Cargill Inc. subsidiary announced plans Monday to build four ethanol plants in the Midwest, each with an annual capacity of 100 million gallons.
The plants will almost triple the ethanol production capacity Cargill directly owns, Cargill spokesman Bill Brady said. Combined with service agreements Cargill has with independently owned ethanol plants, they’ll give Cargill [...]

A Denver biofuel company that’s partnering with agribusiness giant Cargill plans a $300 million public offering to fund its ethanol efforts.
The stock sale by Biofuel Energy Corp. - less than two years after its founding - is more evidence of the movement to cash in on the growing ethanol industry.
The nation’s ethanol production has nearly [...]

Great River Energy will be issuing so-called “Clean Energy Bonds” for a project that affects both its Coal Creek station near Underwood — and the new Spiritwood Energy Park near Jamestown.
Great River will issue $14.5 million in bonds to create a coal-drying facility at Coal Creek. It will remove about 25 percent of the water [...]

BACK in 1999, when she was the head of refining at Chevron, Patricia A. Woertz told a group of energy officials that it was time to stop mixing agricultural policy with fuels policy.
In that same speech, at a fuels conference in Washington, Ms. Woertz also publicly expressed worry about the unintended consequences of a federal [...]

Cargill Thursday reported fourth-quarter earnings of $168 million, down from $230 million a year earlier.
The drop was attributed to a $190 million noncash charge that was the company’s share of a restructuring charge taken by The Mosaic Co. related to its phosphate fertilizer business. Cargill is Mosaic’s majority shareholder.
Excluding the charge, the Minnetonka-based international provider [...]