The facilities are an oilseed crushing and seed oil refining factory located in the port of Amsterdam and an oilseed crushing and storage facility located in Brest, northern France.
Under the EU's Merger Regulation, the Commission concluded the proposed acquisition would raise no competition concerns because of the presence of several alternative competitors in the soybean meal and oil markets, including importers.
The proposal was examined and cleared under the normal merger review procedure.
The acquisition of the two sites, which have an annual processing capacity of around two million tons, was announced in August last year. At the time, a spokesperson for Cargill told our sister publication, FeedNavigator, it remained committed to working in Europe despite the sale.
“We made strategic choices about our asset footprint in the EMEA region,” she said. “We also have an extensive network of plants processing soft seeds (sunflower, rapeseed) across Europe and we continue to focus on serving our customers and growing our longer term business in this sector."
A joint statement issued by the companies said no job losses would occur following the deal, with 120 Dutch employees and 51 French employees transferring to Bunge.