AGT Food CEO signals openness to returning to capital markets
BNN Bloomberg
The chief executive of AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. is leaving the door open to going public again at some point in the future, as the company expands into the renewable fuels business.
The chief executive of AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. is leaving the door open to going public again at some point in the future, as the company expands into the renewable fuels business.
“Our scale, our stability of our earnings, our ESG (environmental, social and governance), and our green focus as a company certainly will have some attraction to the markets as we go forward. So we’ll look, when the time is right, to ensure the company is capitalized and ready for growth,” said Murad Al-Katib, chief executive of AGT, in an interview Monday.
The company, best known for manufacturing pulses such as lentils, peas and chickpeas, announced a joint venture on Monday with Federated Co-operatives Ltd. (FCL) to build a $360-million canola crush facility near Regina that will supply half of the feedstock for a renewable diesel plant.
Al-Katib said the deal will position AGT in two in-demand sectors - plant-based protein and renewable fuel.
“At the end of the day, the global race for protein is on. We’re going to link that to the global race for renewables and I think FCL and AGT is a partnership that’s going to succeed in this business because we’ve covered all the links in the chain,” he said.
AGT Food was taken private in 2019 after agreeing to a management-led buyout that included Al-Katib for $18 per share, valuing the company at $436 million.
