Keep more of the spread.
An agribusiness earns the spread between the crop it buys and the oil, meal and grain it sells. Crop prices, basis, freight and currency move every day, and each one moves that spread. Vadar Alpha prices every purchase, crush, cargo and quote against today's market.
The margin is set at every step from farm to customer: what you pay growers, what you crush and refine, how you ship and what you charge. A different desk prices each step, often from a different spreadsheet, and the spread leaks in the gaps between them.
When prices fall, farmers stop selling forward. The stock you do carry, and its cost, stays on your books.
What to crush and where to send the oil often comes from a weekly sheet, while crush spreads move every day.
An unhedged barge or ocean freight turns each cargo into a bet on fuel and currency.
Each morning Vadar Alpha compares the crush margin at each plant, using today's price for the seed, the oil and the meal. It tells each plant what to run, with the margin in dollars and the point at which it stops paying.
| Weekly plan | Daily with Vadar Alpha | Market range (low) | Market range (high) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | $1.50 | $1.60 | $1.30 | $1.90 |
| Feb | $1.40 | $1.60 | $1.25 | $1.85 |
| Mar | $1.35 | $1.65 | $1.20 | $1.95 |
| Apr | $1.55 | $1.85 | $1.35 | $2.10 |
| May | $1.70 | $2.00 | $1.50 | $2.25 |
| Jun | $1.60 | $1.95 | $1.45 | $2.20 |
| Jul | $1.45 | $1.75 | $1.30 | $2.00 |
| Aug | $1.35 | $1.65 | $1.20 | $1.90 |
| Sep | $1.60 | $1.90 | $1.40 | $2.15 |
| Oct | $1.80 | $2.15 | $1.60 | $2.35 |
| Nov | $1.70 | $2.05 | $1.55 | $2.30 |
| Dec | $1.60 | $1.90 | $1.45 | $2.10 |
We read your grower contracts, plant runs, stocks, cargoes and hedge positions from the systems you already use.
Purchases, crush and refining runs, freight and quotes are each priced against futures, basis, freight and currency.
Merchandisers, plants, traders and sales get instructions. We score each result against a baseline your finance team agrees on.
| Margin gain | |
|---|---|
| Origination | $3.2M |
| Crush | $5.8M |
| Refining | $2.4M |
| Freight | $1.9M |
| Sales | $2.7M |
Each gain is tied to the decision that produced it, from the grower contract to the customer quote, and measured against a baseline your finance team agrees on. We count each dollar once.
An agribusiness earns its margin in a chain: buy the crop, process it, ship it and sell it. Each link has its own price risk, and the margin is what is left after all of them.
Grower contracts set the cost of the crop. Pricing them against futures and local basis each day shows when to buy and when to wait. When growers hold back in a falling market, the cost of carrying the stock you hold is priced into each decision.
A crush plant can often run more than one seed, and a refinery can send oil to food or to fuel. Each choice has a margin that changes with oil, meal, energy and renewable fuel credits. Vadar Alpha prices those choices every day, within each plant's tank, line and contract limits.
Barge and ocean freight, bunker fuel and currency can turn a profitable cargo into a loss. Vadar Alpha shows each cargo's exposures in one view and sizes the hedges to what is still open.
Many food and feed customers buy spot. Quoting each one against what it costs to replace the product today, not last week's sheet, keeps margin from eroding before delivery.
Every decision arrives as a plain instruction, with the dollars at stake, the reason, and the point at which it stops paying.
Measured asCrush margin is the value of the oil and meal from a bushel of oilseed, minus the cost of the seed. For soybeans, the board crush uses CBOT soybean, soybean oil and soybean meal futures. A plant's real margin also depends on its yields, energy, freight and basis.
Basis is the local cash price minus the futures price. It reflects freight, storage and local supply and demand. Two purchases at the same futures price can earn very different margins, so Vadar Alpha prices each grower contract on both.
As exposures, the same as the crop. Each cargo's freight, fuel and currency show beside its grain position, and hedges are sized to the amount still open.
No. Vadar Alpha reads from the systems you already use, such as your trading and risk system, ERP and plant systems. We start with one decision, such as one plant's crush mix, and show its value on your own data in days.
A 30 minute conversation to see where your margin leaks and whether we can help.
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