The U.S. Grains Council sponsored a 12-member Korean feed grains buyer team to the United States for Export Exchange 2016 program, resulting in more than $9 million in grain sales.
The Korean team consisted of six feed formulators from major feed companies and six distiller’s dried grains with solubes (DDGS) traders. The itinerary included participating in Export Exchange 2016 events in Detroit, Michigan, with side visits to a commercial corn farm operation, local grain elevators, a commodity trading house, an ethanol plant, a livestock farm, a livestock feed company and a DDGS trans-loading facility. Through these visits, the participants had opportunities to understand the whole of the U.S. grain and co-product export supply chain, confirming the transparent U.S. quality control system.
At the conclusion of the program, the Korean participants indicated that they were negotiating or had successfully purchased 49,800 metric tons of U.S. DDGS, worth $8.4 million and 5,000 metric tons of U.S. barley, worth $750,000.
The Council invested $90,000 of Market Access Program (MAP) funds to support this Korean market promotion program, with a resulting return on investment of $9.1 million or $101 per $1 of MAP invested.