FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Agriculture and Commodity Processors
World's Most Productive Companies
Global Agri-Value Chains: Margin Swings and Market Disruptions
Companies in this Peer Group all operate as integrated, global agribusinesses that span origination, logistics, merchandising, processing, ingredients, and branded or B2B downstream channels. All processes raw agricultural commodities into value-added products such as grains, oils, starches, and animal feed. Facilities utilize mechanical and chemical processing methods, including crushing, milling, fermenting, and extruding. They are all exposed to similar fundamental drivers and risks, including commodity price volatility, basis and crush spreads, foreign exchange, interest rates, weather and climate variability, counterparty credit, and evolving regulation.
COVID logistics shocks, wartime grain and fertilizer disruptions, drought-driven shipping constraints, El Niño yield effects, biofuel policy shifts, and high interest rates defined 2019-2024 for these companies. These forces drove alternating surges and normalizations in merchandising and crush margins across their global agribusiness value chains.
Top 100 World's Most Productive Companies - Agriculture and Commodity Processors
Productivity Snapshot
The Agriculture and Commodity Processors experienced a similar productivity trend to many other industries and peer groups: a surge in productivity from 2020 to 2023, followed by a regression to declining productivity in 2023 and 2024. The shape of the curve was “flatter” than that of many other industries and some peer groups.
- Productivity for the peer group has grown over the last six years, with an average annual productivity growth of 8.4%. This segment, like Food and Beverage generally, performed below the average for manufacturers represented in the IPI.
- All of these companies had negative productivity growth in 2023 and 2024.
- 2024 Productivity declined an average of 19.3% across these companies.
- Bungee earned its position within the LNS 2025 World’s Most Productive Companies by growing productivity 13.6% over the last six years, more than 61.2% above the average of its peers/competitors. Since 2019, Bunge has increased baseline productivity by funding targeted plant and network projects, digitizing logistics, enhancing supply assurance, and pruning non-core assets.
