United Grain Corp. CEO Augusto Bassanini was the featured guest at last week’s Spring 2017 Boardroom Breakfast, held at the Red Cross Building at Fort Vancouver.
Here are 10 things we learned about Bassanini and the Port of Vancouver tenant during the discussion:
- United Grain Corp is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsui and a global company doing business in 66 countries.
- United Grain (previously United Harvest) has been in Vancouver for 48 years.
- One sea-going cargo ship carrying wheat from United Grain can transport the wheat from 60,000 acres.
- United Grain will transfer more than 5 million metric tons of grain annually, 90 percent by rail and 10 percent by barge.
- More than $1 billion has been invested in regional infrastructure (terminals, rail, port facilities) primarily to allow for the demand on the region’s exports to China.
- Augusto was born in northern Italy and move to Indiana with his family when he was 17 years old.
- The Bassanini family ran a hog operation in Italy and relocated it to Indiana when the family moved to the United States.
- Augusto was a college soccer player while at Purdue University where he studied agricultural economics.
- While still at home and working with his father raising hogs, Augusto’s father would ask him, “Smell that? That is the smell of money.”
- The original plan was for Augusto to return and work in the family business, but he smelled a different kind of money.
Register for the Vancouver Business Journal’s next Boardroom Breakfast event, featuring Frank Nichols, president/CEO of Silicon Forest, here.
