Risk Management
Risk
Management has become almost a necessity for most agricultural industries that
buy, sell, store, transport, or process grains or grain products. Markets have
evolved to display seemingly ever greater volatility than has been seen in
decades. Violent price movements, up or down,
threaten the very viability of many companies within our industry, not to
mention the cash flow requirements necessary to maintain risk management
strategies. FITC will work with your individual needs and
help you determine the need for a risk management strategy and your tolerance
for risk. With the countless risk management tools that can be utilized, the
FITC team can suggest those tools and a strategy that might bring some measure
of risk management to your operation. While we are not a futures or options
brokerage firm and do not directly trade such instruments for customers, we can
put you in touch with reputable brokerage houses whose business it is to trade
these products. A risk management strategy is essential to any comprehensive
procurement program.
Logistics
Hand in hand
with procurement services, logistics expertise is as important if not more so
than the procurement effort itself. While purchasing has its own set of
challenges, in many cases the challenges in getting that product to the mill in
a timely manner and at a competitive price can be at least equally intense.
Feed Ingredient Trading has long standing relationships with a myriad of
trucking concerns that run every sort of rig you may need to get product from its
source to the production facility. Close communication between us and those we
deal with in the trucking industry keeps us appraised of which trucks need to
get from one place to another allowing us to match loads needing to be hauled
with the available supply of truckers in position to do those loads. May of
these truckers rely upon Feed Ingredient Trading to supply them with a fixed
number of guaranteed loads each week. This allows us to get those products we
purchase to our customers in a timely and efficient manner. In terms of rail
transportation, Feed Ingredient Trading maintains close relations with each of
the Class 1 railroads coast to coast as well as with the regional carriers where
our customers are so as to facilitate rail transport of goods and products to
destinations in as seamless a manner as possible. One of the original purposes
and functions of the company was to provide consulting services for customers
needing help from the rail carriers to facilitate flow of products to their
mill sites. We are still in the business of offering these sorts of services.
Are you experiencing problems in any of your logistics needs? If so, we are
only a phone call or e-mail away, and are ready to help if we
can!
Procurement / Trading
From day one,
the primary function of FITC was to offer and provide
procurement services to customers in their efforts to supply
their facilities with quality, low cost agricultural commodities. Initially, the procurement
service that was offered to clients was to have FITC act as the purchasing
department of the agricultual commodities for customers, thus
freeing up their time to concentrate on other aspects of their business. These
services were offered on a fee basis with the fee determined by the tonnage
handled and the complexity of the logistics in getting these products to the
customer’s facilities. As we grew and others wanted the type of services we
were providing to the original customers, services were offered to accounts on a
“cost plus” basis. Today we work with a significant number of customers in
numerous ways. We can custom tailor a purchasing program for a customer's procurement needs right from handling any one specific commodity for the
customer, up to handling a company's total product purchasing
function. In some cases we even provide purchasing consulting services on agricultural commodities upon which the customer wants advice.