Ah, virtual water.*
From the Wall Street Journal, February 23:
Olam will sell its entire 64.57% stake in Olam Agri in two tranches
....MORESingapore-based Olam Group has agreed to sell its remaining stake in its agricultural products business to state-owned Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company, bringing the business’s equity value to US$4.0 billion.
Olam will sell its entire 64.57% stake in Olam Agri in two tranches, Olam said on Monday. The first tranche, comprising 44.58% of Olam Agri, will be sold to Salic for US$1.78 billion, while the remaining 19.99% will be sold after three years.
Olam Agri supplies grains and oilseeds, animal feed and protein, rice, edible oils, specialty grains and seeds, cotton, wood products, rubber, and commodity financial services. It has operations in more than 30 countries and its revenue topped US$23 billion in 2023.
The transaction implies an equity valuation for Olam Agri of US$4.00 billion, representing a 14% premium to the US$3.50 billion valuation when Salic first acquired a 35.43% stake in 2022.
Olam is expected to raise gross cash proceeds of US$2.58 billion from the deal....
*We've looked at virtual water a few times:
One of the few Limits to Growth that actually is a limit rather than some sort of scarcity meme.However even this should be beatable if some smart people can do the deep dive into the wonder and magic (okay, chemistry and physics) that is H2O.
We'll be hearing about virtual water with increasing frequency, right now there are only 298,000 hits in a Google search....[now up to 459,00]
February 2014
California Drought: Why Farmers Are 'Exporting Water' to China
March 2016
Shipping U.S. Water To Saudi Arabia
As we've noted elsewhere this is an example of what the hydrology pros call 'virtual water'.
Water is interesting stuff.
We'll have a few posts on it over the next week or so, starting off with something easy: virtual water....
February 2022
Embedded Water
