American farmer-owned co-operative, CHS, has bought Northstar Agri Industries, an agribusiness with facilities in the U.S. and southern Manitoba. This means as of August, CHS is taking over operations at Northstar's canola crushing plant in Hallock, Minnesota and receiving station in Winkler, MB.

CHS vice president of processing and food ingredients, Tom Malecha, says with the operation in Hallock, this is CHS's first canola processing plant.

"We see this as really just the beginning of our presence in processing canola and our presence within originating more grains within southern Manitoba and Canada in general," he says.

CHS already processes crops like soybeans and corn into oil and ethanol. Malecha says the acquisition this is a stepping stone for further Canadian expansion, which would be the next rational step in expanding CHS's business.

"We have facilities in Duluth, in New Orleans, in the Pacific Northwest region, that we need to source grains for, and obviously Canada is a great place to grow grain," he says. "To me, it's just kind of a normal progression to have more facilities within southern Canada."

Malecha says because they are a farmer-owned co-op, this transaction grows value for farmers by allowing them to own more of the supply chain and processing within canola.