Cargill CEO, David MacLennan says he’s open to major acquisitions as the US’s largest privately held company looks to tap growing demand for alternative proteins.
The CEO of Cargill, one of the ‘world’s top producers and distributors of agricultural products and leading supplier of salmon feed said in an interview taped to air next month on Bloomberg Television’s Commodities Edge show that the biggest disrupter “is alternative forms of protein, things like meat, if you want to call it that, made from plants or made in the laboratory.”
As a result, MacLennan said that the company may have to make uncharacteristically large purchases to grow its presence, he said.
“We don’t make big, big acquisitions, but if it’s strategically accretive, it’s something that we think can fit very quickly and it’s in one of our areas that is consistent with our strategy, we’ll be comfortable making those acquisitions,” MacLennan said.
He also predicated the dinner table of the future will be food consumed in very small quantities such as tablets with added proteins and vitamins. Eating less but with more nutrition “I think, in part, that’s where the industry will go” he said.
In 2015, Cargill bought EWOS, a producer of salmon feed for $1.5 billion.
