About

AFGRI is a leading South African agricultural products and processing company that offers a wide range of products and services to farmers, producers and manufacturers. The legal team, headed by Pieter Badenhorst as director of legal, risk and compliance, focuses on providing in-house support for high value M&A, banking and finance transactions that have previously been outsourced to external law firms. Due to the senior position of Badenhorst, the legal team is a vital element of the decision making process of the group. The team has instrumental in key transactions from their inception to their implementation, and most of the documentation has been drafted completely in-house without the need for outside counsel.

Recent notable transactions include a R1.2bn disposal of AFGRI Poultry Proprietary, and the completion of a R2.5bn term loan facility. Among a series of impressive technical innovations, AFGRI’s legal team has impressed with its work on creating a virtual silo complex to assist AFGRI’s grain division to do location swaps of grain under finance with financiers without first having to obtain the prior written approval from such financiers.

‘Only once the swapped grain exceeds a predetermined value, will there be a requirement on AFGRI to update the financier’s exposure on AFGRI folio account system and the financier’s position keeping system’, Badenhorst says. ‘This allows for a light administrative process, will not have any cash flow impact due to the single location differential and futures will not need to be exchanged’.