Legumex Walker shareholders approve sale

Shareholders in Prairie special crops processor Legumex Walker have voted to take a deal for their company’s assets from U.S. grain firm Scoular.

Winnipeg-based Legumex reported Monday that shareholders representing just over 76 per cent of its stock have voted 99.6 per cent in favour of selling the company’s special crops division to the Scoular Co.

Participating shareholders also voted 89.7 per cent in favour of the company’s voluntary liquidation and dissolution, as per the deal announced in September and the proposal laid out by company management Oct. 15.

All necessary federal and provincial regulatory approvals are in place for the sale to Scoular, Legumex said Monday in a release. The special crops assets include plants in Western Canada, the U.S. and China.

The deal, worth $174.6 million ($94 million plus net working capital) is now expected to close by Nov. 30, pending other third-party approvals and other closing conditions, the company said.

Legumex said in a separate statement Oct. 26 it “continues to make progress” toward a sale of its other major asset, an 84 per cent stake in the Pacific Coast Canola (PCC) crush plant in Washington state.

An agreement in principle is in place with the plant’s unnamed “prospective acquirers,” Legumex said, subject to approval from PCC’s secured lenders.

If a deal closes successfully, one of the closing conditions will be the termination of PCC’s supply and marketing agreement with Scoular, under which the U.S. company was to source canola for the plant and market its output.

Legumex said it “does not expect to receive any value” from the sale of its stake in PCC.

Publicly-traded Legumex also said Oct. 26 its distribution guidance from its asset sale and liquidation will depend partly on whether the company is on the hook for $1.2 million in severance obligations at PCC and/or for a US$1.5 million payment to Scoular stemming from the end of the PCC supply and marketing agreement.

Legumex Walker was created in 2011 from the merger of two family-owned Prairie companies, Tisdale, Sask.-based Walker Seeds and Roy Legumex of St. Jean Baptiste, Man., bringing their special crop processing assets and the plan for the PCC plant into the new firm.

Its later expansions included Canada’s biggest sunflower processor, Keystone Grain of Winkler, Man., and stakes in the U.S. dry bean and sunflower seed markets with deals for St. Hilaire Seed Co. and the sunflower processing assets of Anderson Seed Co. — AGCanada.com Network