Louis Dreyfus to reopen rival's former grain export terminal in Indiana

By Karl Plume

CHICAGO, June 23 (Reuters) - Louis Dreyfus Company will reopen a shuttered U.S. grains terminal in Burns Harbor, Indiana, on the southern edge of Lake Michigan in early 2026, providing the global commodities trader export market access via the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, the Rotterdam-based company said on Monday.

The facility was built by rival grains merchant Cargill in 1979 but has been idled since 2023, when the company ceased operations there due to difficult market conditions.

Privately-held Dreyfus is the "D" in the ABCD quartet of global grains trading giants, along with Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland ADM.N and Bunge Global BG.N. All four companies have faced eroding profits due to a global grains glut and tepid demand.

The Burns Harbor terminal will be able to load up to 90,000 bushels an hour on grain ships as large as 30,000 metric tons in capacity, about half the size of ships loaded at larger terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest.

The facility can also unload up to 30,000 bushels an hour from unit trains, and it includes storage capacity for 7.2 million bushels of grain, along with 200 rail cars and 20 barges, Dreyfus said.

“Burns Harbor is well-positioned at the southern shore of Lake Michigan, with access to multiple regional grain markets. The port will be a strategic asset for LDC to expand market access for regional farmers and serve customers in North America and abroad," Gordon Russell, head grains and oilseeds at Dreyfus, said in a release.

Terms of the deal with the Ports of Indiana were not disclosed.

Grain exports from the Great Lakes system represent a small share of total U.S. agricultural exports, which were valued at $176 billion last year, with the bulk of crop shipments departing the country from the U.S. Gulf Coast or the Pacific Northwest.

Exporters have shipped only about 125,000 metric tons of corn and wheat so far this year from Lakes terminals after shipping about 1.06 million tons of corn, wheat and soybeans at its ports last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture export inspections data.