Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) announced Dec. 1 that it has entered into an underwriting agreement to sell its 19.9% ownership stake in GrainCorp Ltd. of Sydney, Australia, for a total value of about $287 million (U.S.).

“As part of our ongoing portfolio management, we carefully considered our equity investment position in GrainCorp and determined that we could better meet our long-term returns objectives by reallocating that capital,” ADM chairman and chief executive officer Juan Luciano said. “This transaction will allow us to further reduce our invested capital, and it will provide cash that we can redeploy to higher-return investments as we continue to execute our balanced capital allocation framework.”

The transaction has been executed by way of an underwritten sale to an underwriter. Under the terms of the agreement, ADM will sell all of its 19.9% investment in the issued capital in GrainCorp at a price of A$8.53 per share.

GrainCorp is eastern Australia's largest grain storage and transportation network.