The non-profit organization has opened its Member Needs Help service to all Canadian manufacturers, whether they are EMC members or not, to “foster collaboration and knowledge sharing within the manufacturing community” regarding Canada/U.S. trade relations.

“This edition addresses pressing questions inspired by industry challenges, providing a platform where you, the experts, can share insights and solutions. EMC is also committed to supporting manufacturers in finding answers to these complex issues,” the website said.

Click here for a full list of resources and to sign up for email updates.

EMC will also host a virtual information session with a customs broker on Feb. 6 at 10:30 a.m. CST to answer questions regarding the new tariffs and their impacts.

For more information or to register, click here.

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The company, along with Ram Industries Inc., was placed in receivership June 11 after numerous financial difficulties were reported and the company missed payments to BMO. It owes BMO more than $16.6 million.

Ernst & Young on July 2 posted that it is accepting offers to purchase Leon’s physical assets, or proposals to liquidate the assets, until July 31.

The assets include tools, equipment, rolling stock, office furnishings and real estate.

Buyers may purchase the entire block or individual items.

The real estate at 135 York Road is a 93,235 sq. foot facility on 12.79 acres. It also has a 1,700 sq. foot storage building and a 3,240 sq. foot Quonset.

Leon was in business for more than 70 years.

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The maker of farm machinery, Iveco commercial vehicles, construction equipment and powertrains plans to shut the concerned plants for eight working days this month, it said in a statement, adding that it is constantly reviewing its production schedules.

Automakers around the world are grappling with the shortage of semiconductor chips amid a post-pandemic rise in demand, forcing several companies to reduce the pace of production in recent months.

Besides, some carmakers have warned the chip crisis will drag on into 2022 with earlier industry hopes of a quick resolution long since dashed.

— Reporting for Reuters by Anirudh Saligrama in Bangalore.

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The world’s largest farm equipment manufacturer now expects net income in fiscal 2021 to be between $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion, up from a range of $5.3 billion and $5.7 billion forecast in May (all figures US$). This is the third upgrade in the company’s earnings estimate in seven months.

Higher farm income following a run-up in commodity prices and the need to replace aging fleets are driving up demand for new tractors and combines.

“Looking ahead, we expect demand for farm and construction equipment to continue benefiting from favourable fundamentals,” Deere CEO John May said.

The demand is booming at a time when dealer inventories are at a record low and the pandemic has disrupted the supply chain, extending the time equipment makers need to produce new orders. Big tractor makers including Deere are booking orders for delivery in 2022.

With supplies lagging demand, farm machinery companies are able to push through price increases to offset their soaring input costs.

For example, Deere’s revised earnings estimate assumes an eight per cent gain in prices for large farm machines. That compares with a six per cent price increase estimated in February.

The company also revised up the outlook for industry sales of agricultural equipment in Europe and Asia, though it left estimates for sales in the U.S., Canada and South America unchanged.

Earnings for the third quarter came in at $5.32 per share, up from $2.57 per share ago. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv, on average, expected the company to post a profit of $4.55 per share.

Equipment sales rose 32 per cent year-on-year to about $10.4 billion.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago and Sanjana Shivdas in Bangalore.

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Winnipeg-based Ag Growth International (AGI) said Monday it has signed a conditional letter of intent with Phoenix-based MyLand Co., which would see the Canadian firm take up a minority stake in MyLand and a seat on the U.S. company’s board of directors.

AGI, in return, will set up “at least five” new MyLand systems on grain operations in North America.

Once it has “satisfactory technical and commercial validation” of those installations in hand, AGI said it plans to enter manufacturing, distribution, engineering and software service support agreements with MyLand.

MyLand’s “Soil-as-a-Service” process extracts live, native microorganisms from a client grower’s soil and “rapidly” reproduces those organisms on-site.

MyLand’s equipment ties directly into a client farm’s irrigation system, using it to deliver “mass quantities” of those microorganisms back into fields’ soils on a continuous basis.

In the soil, the microbes then “continue to propagate, building the foundation for healthy soil and optimal growing conditions.”

MyLand says its systems are currently built to handle up to 1,000 acres each and have an expected useful life of about 15 years. Client farms pay monthly subscription-type fees for the service over contract terms of between two and five years.

In a release, AGI CEO Tim Close said the company believes its AGI SureTrack bin monitoring, crop maintenance and quality control system will, over time, “be able to capture the advanced information on soil health and irrigation system activity to create a new layer of standardized data that can be used to support a variety of sustainability-related objectives.”

AGI, whose grain handling, storage and conditioning brands include Westeel, Twister, Westfield, Batco and Ezee-Dry, “is an ideal partner for MyLand at this stage of our growth,” MyLand CEO Peter Williams said in the same release.

“The potential to provide solutions for large-scale row crops, with significant dedicated acreage, is a core opportunity for MyLand. AGI’s deep roots and expertise in this area, in addition to the resources and capabilities of a multi-national firm, make them a perfect partner for us to rapidly expand our platform and reach new customers globally.”

MyLand this year began moving past the product development and testing phases with plans to roll out its systems on farms mainly in the southwestern U.S., such as in California, Arizona and Texas.

The company says its systems’ use results in “increases in soil organic matter, porosity, water holding capacity, soil aggregation, carbon storage, and even worm population (and) allows the percolation of salt to much lower levels in the soil.”

The resulting improvement in soil structure “reduces the need for tillage, soil amendments, fertility products, and irrigation,” the company says. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Alberta’s Agriculture Financial Services Corp. (AFSC) announced Thursday it had discontinued its Rural Business Loan Program effective immediately, so as to “concentrate its efforts on agricultural producers and agribusinesses.”

The decision means no new loan applications will be accepted under the program and anyone seeking a rural business loan would be referred to “other financial institutions within Alberta.”

Active applications received before April 1 will be considered and approved if they meet borrowing requirements and conditions, AFSC said.

Clients with existing Rural Business Loans, meanwhile, can still deal with their AFSC lending relationship manager on renewal and amendment options, the agency added.

The program, one of several AFSC launched in October 2018 in an expansion of its offerings, was meant to support investment within the province by “providing access to financing to enhance and contribute to Alberta’s economy.”

The Rural Business Loan Program was geared toward providing new or existing small- and medium-sized commercial and manufacturing businesses in rural communities with an “alternative” source of fixed-rate term loans, with customized terms and “competitive” rates. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Judge Shawn Smith of Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatoon on Friday approved the sale of Morris to a numbered-company arm of Superior Farms Solutions Ltd. (SFSL), the operator of Rite Way Manufacturing. The numbered company will operate as “Morris Equipment.”

The deal will see Morris’ Saskatoon head office, its Minnedosa, Man. manufacturing plant and its patents and related intellectual property go to Rite Way. The deal’s financial terms and dollar amounts are redacted in court documents posted online.

Rite Way and Morris’ court-appointed monitor have agreed to target a closing date of Dec. 31 for the deal.

In its report to the court on Dec. 11, Alvarez and Marsal, the monitor for Morris, described the deal as “the culmination of all of the efforts and resources expended by Morris Group and its stakeholders over the course of the last 12 months.”

If approved and completed, the monitor said, the deal “will preserve the core components of the 90-year-old farm equipment manufacturing enterprise carried on by Morris Group (and its predecessors) continuously from the 1920s until the present date.”

However, in its “exhaustive sale process” to find an investor or buyer for Morris, “no party had expressed to the monitor an intention to purchase, acquire or operate the Yorkton plant,” the monitor said.

The deal as reached means the Yorkton plant will close down when the deal is completed, officially putting the plant’s 20 remaining employees and another 50 laid-off employees out of work.

Without a letter of understanding, as was reached earlier this year between the company and the Yorkton plant’s union, the plant’s collective bargaining agreement would have required any buyer to “take on a degree of labour relations risk for their existing business operations” even if it didn’t buy the Yorkton facility.

The Yorkton plant’s workers, members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 955, approved the terms of the letter in August in a vote at an open-air meeting at a Yorkton baseball diamond.

The exact contents of the letter were kept confidential in the monitor’s Dec. 11 report. It calls for creation of a fund to manage payments to Yorkton plant employees “whose employment is anticipated to be terminated.”

The importance of the letter of understanding to the deal “on which the survival of this business enterprise is based cannot be overstated,” Alvarez and Marsal wrote in its report.

BMO, which as Morris’ principal secured creditor is owed about $25 million, has said it supports the proposed sale but also now plans to file for an application-for-bankruptcy order against Morris Group, likely to be heard in court next month.

A bankruptcy would see the employment terminated for Morris’ Saskatoon and Minnedosa staff but, as the monitor’s report puts it, “reasonable prospects exist” for those staff to get employment with the new owner.

Operating in creditor protection since January this year, Morris’ businesses include manufacturing air carts, drills, seeders, harrow bars and bale carriers.

Founded in 1929 as Morris Rod-Weeder, the company was owned by the Morris family up until 2007, when it was sold to an ownership group led by then-CEO Casey Davis. Another ownership group, led by Ben Voss replacing Davis as CEO, took majority control in 2017.

Morris has operated a plant at Yorkton since 1949 and at Minnedosa since 1960, and went on to expand both plants several times. A company-owned dealership and service centre at Virden, Man. closed earlier this year.

Rite Way, founded by Regina machine shop owner Les Hulicsko, is today headquartered in Regina but has its main plant at Imperial, Sask., about 130 km north of the city. Hulicsko, who began building rock pickers in 1972, sold the business in 2012.

Apart from rock pickers and rock windrowers, Rite Way’s product lines today include land rollers, heavy harrows, rotary harrows, crimper rollers, bale carts, grapples and high-speed compact discs. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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After consolidating its U.S. manufacturing this summer into one plant at Willmar, Minn., about 140 km west of Minneapolis, the company said Thursday it will also halt production at Willmar in early 2021.

Buhler, which also has Canadian plants at Winnipeg and Morden, Man. and Vegreville, Alta., said Thursday the Morden plant “will now be the primary source of Farm King production” and other product lines now made at Willmar.

Buhler’s Farm King product lines include include augers, mowers, bale carriers, snowblowers, compact implements and tillage tools. The company’s other product lines include Versatile tractors and sprayers.

The company described the Morden plant, about 110 km southwest of Winnipeg, as “one of the original and most efficient Buhler Industries factories.”

Relocating the U.S.-made Farm King product lines to Morden this winter “will optimize output at that facility while capitalizing on the fluctuations in the exchange rate,” Buhler said.

In its third-quarter financials in August, Buhler had said it faced “unpredictability in the agriculture commodities market and fluctuations in the exchange rate, as dealers in Canada market several U.S.-based Farm King-branded products.”

Farm King dealers in Canada and the U.S. “will not experience delays in delivery of whole goods or service parts” as a result of the move, the company said Thursday.

Buhler has operated at Willmar since 2011, when it bought an existing 135,000-square foot facility and set up production lines there for Versatile sprayers and Farm King application equipment.

Other Farm King work was moved to Willmar this summer as the company wound down operations at its Fargo, N.D. plant and shut the latter facility in late September.

Shutting the Willmar operation also follows “further analysis of trends in agriculture and manufacturing,” Buhler said.

Following a run of four straight quarterly net losses, Buhler in August reported a small Q3 profit of about $462,000 on $76.6 million in sales for its third quarter ending June 30, up from a $1.17 million net loss on $64.1 million in sales in the year-earlier period.

The increase in sales stemmed from a “strong return to the U.S. market,” Buhler said at the time, while sales into Canada and Eastern Europe “remain below historical levels.”

Buhler, majority-owned by Russian harvest equipment maker Rostselmash, said in August it has made “improvements in manufacturing efficiencies,” but found “competitive pressures have led to reduced gross margins.”

Losses on foreign exchange and “decreased gain on the sale of surplus assets” have offset its cuts in research and development spending and lower interest costs, the company said.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic “will continue to have an impact on the company as farmers, dealers and governments work through the next stages,” Buhler said, but added management couldn’t provide guidance on that impact. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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As the deal kicks in, the Trump administration is threatening Canada with new aluminum tariffs, and a prominent Mexican labour activist has been jailed, underscoring concerns about crucial labor reforms in the replacement for the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement includes tighter North American content rules for autos, new protections for intellectual property, prohibitions against currency manipulation and new rules on digital commerce that did not exist when NAFTA launched in 1994.

Trump had lambasted NAFTA as the “worst trade deal ever made” and repeatedly threatened to end it.

CUSMA launches as the coronavirus has all three countries mired in a deep recession, cutting their April goods trade flows — normally about $1.2 trillion annually — to the lowest monthly level in a decade (all figures US$).

“The champagne isn’t quite as fizzy as we might have expected — even under the best of circumstances — and there’s trouble coming from all sides,” said Mary Lovely, a Syracuse University economics professor and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “This could be a trade agreement that quickly ends up in dispute and higher trade barriers.”

Issues dogging CUSMA include hundreds of legal challenges to Mexico’s new labour law championed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to ensure that workers can freely organize and unions are granted full collective bargaining rights.

A ruling against it would harm Mexico’s ability to deliver on provisions aimed at ending labour contracts agreed without worker consent that are stacked in favour of companies and have kept wages chronically low in Mexico.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress had insisted on the stronger labour provisions last year before granting approval, prompting a substantial renegotiation of terms first agreed in October 2018. The arrest of Mexican labour lawyer Susana Prieto in early June has fueled U.S. unions’ arguments that Mexican workers’ rights are not being sufficiently protected.

“I remain very concerned that Mexico is falling short of its commitments to implement the legislative reforms that are the foundation in Mexico for effectively protecting labor rights,” U.S. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the House ways and means committee, said on Tuesday, adding that CUSMA’s success “truly hinges” on its new labour enforcement mechanism.

On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in a video touted CUSMA as the “most far-reaching, beneficial and modern trade agreement in our history,” adding that it would create tens of thousands of new U.S. manufacturing jobs.

But Lighthizer has also said he will file dispute cases “early and often” to enforce CUSMA provisions, citing Mexico’s failure to approve U.S. biotech products.

That could lead to increased tariffs on offending goods, such as products from individual factories where labour violations are found. Former USTR general counsel Stephen Vaughn, a legal architect of the Trump administration’s “Section 301” tariffs on Chinese goods, was appointed on Wednesday to a U.S. roster of panelists to settle state-to-state dispute cases under CUSMA.

Carlos Vejar, a former Mexican trade negotiator, said it was in the country’s interest to uphold pledges made to strengthen unions and end child labour.

“If Mexico isn’t mindful of this, there will be cases against Mexico, and Mexico will lose them,” Vejar said.

Aluminum tariffs redux, automotive burdens

U.S. national security tariffs on imported steel and aluminum — including from Canada and Mexico — were a major irritant during CUSMA negotiations until a deal for exemptions was reached last year. But now, USTR is considering domestic producers’ request to restore the 10 per cent duty on Canadian aluminum to combat a “surge” of imports.

Another source of disputes may be the energy sector, where the main U.S. oil and gas lobby has complained that recent actions by Mexico favouring state oil company Pemex already violate CUSMA’s protections for private investors.

Canada has also complained about new Mexican rules formally threatening investment in renewable energy.

CUSMA will put new compliance burdens on the region’s automotive manufacturers as the coronavirus craters consumer spending and auto production. Within three to five years, vehicles’ minimum North American content rises to 75 per cent from 62.5. Automakers must also produce 40 per cent of their vehicles’ content in “high wage” areas — effectively the United States and Canada.

A U.S. International Trade Commission study found this would draw more auto parts production to the United States, but may curb U.S. vehicle assembly and raise prices, limiting consumer choice in cars. The same panel found that after 15 years, the deal would add $68.5 billion annually to U.S. economic output and create 176,000 jobs compared with a NAFTA baseline.

— Reporting for Reuters by David Lawder in Washington, Dave Graham, Anthony Esposito and Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; writing by David Lawder.

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The Winnipeg company, whose product lines include Versatile tractors and sprayers and Farm King application, tillage and hay equipment, said Monday it’s “optimizing” its U.S. production to boost efficiency and cut overhead costs at its factory at Willmar, Minn., about 140 km west of Minneapolis.

To do so, the company said the manufacturing now done at Fargo will be relocated to Willmar over the summer, and it will “cease” production at Fargo effective Sept. 30.

Buhler, which also has Canadian plants at Winnipeg and Morden, Man. and Vegreville, Alta., has operated at Willmar since 2011, when it bought an existing 135,000-square foot facility and set up production lines there for its Versatile self-propelled sprayers and Farm King application equipment.

The Fargo plant and warehouse, which today employ about 35 people working on various Farm King product lines, have been owned by Buhler since 2002.

That’s when Alloway Industries, a joint venture between Deere and Co. and Woods Equipment Co., dissolved and the partners sold off their manufacturing site and its equipment.

Consolidating operations at Willmar is expected to “reduce excess manufacturing capacity and will enable the company to remain competitive without compromising quality,” Buhler said in a release.

The company said its decision stems from “unpredictability” in ag commodity markets and flux in the Canada-U.S. exchange rate, as Buhler’s dealers in Canada market several of its “U.S.-based” Farm King-branded products.

Buhler in February booked a net loss of $5.45 million on $49.24 million in revenue for its first quarter ending Dec. 31, down from a $4.44 million loss on $57.33 million in revenue in the year-earlier period.

The company at the time cited “trade uncertainties, bad harvest conditions and poor crop yields” as well as low commodity prices for the drop in revenues. Q1 sales were “below historical levels” in Canada and Eastern Europe, while U.S. sales had “return(ed) to historical levels” for the period. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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