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• ConAgra Mills had about $1.8 billion in sales for fiscal 2012, while Horizon Milling had sales of approximately $2.5 billion.
• ConAgra Mills employs about 1,000 people while Horizon Milling has about 1,400, Niiya said. Staffing levels for the new business haven't been determined, she said.
• The deal is subject to regulatory clearances. ConAgra's Niiya said the companies will cooperate if the Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice has questions.
• "We strongly believe the formation of Ardent Mills will enhance competition and customer and consumer choice," Niiya said.
• As big as the new company will be, it probably won't be big enough to affect the prices consumers pay, said Ed Usset, a grain marketing specialist at the University of Mnnesota who used to work in the milling industry for Pillsbury.
• Flour goes into a huge range of foods from bread and bagels to cookies and pasta. But Usset said the biggest market for these companies is the wholesale trade to the big commercial bread bakeries. The sacks of flour home cooks buy at supermarkets represent just a small portion of the milling industry, he said.
• "It's a very competitive industry ... In a lot of ways it's still a raw commodity business. In a commodity business the low-cost producer wins. So that's what you're trying to be," Usset said.
• ConAgra Foods Inc. and the privately-held Cargill will each get a 44 percent stake in Ardent Mills while CHS will get the remaining 12 percent.
• "Ardent Mills will set the new industry standard by addressing the most important issues facing customers, such as commodity price volatility, increasingly sophisticated food safety requirements, the need for more cost-effective supply chains and growing market demand for more innovation in products and processes," ConAgra Foods Inc. CEO Gary Rodkin said in a statement.
• Horizon Milling is the largest U.S. milling company as measured by production capacity, followed by ADM Milling and ConAgra Mills, according to the 2013 Grain & Milling Annual, compiled by Sosland Publishing Co. of Kansas City, Mo. Horizon has a daily capacity of 290,500 hundredweight, compared with 281,100 hundredweight for ADM Milling and 255,100 hundredweight for ConAgra Mills, the report says.
• The total combined capacity of Horizon Milling and ConAgra Mills would give Ardent Mills a 34 percent share of the U.S. total of 1.6 million hundredweight, compared with 18 percent for ADM Milling.
• "It's not about getting bigger, it's about serving customers better," Cargill spokeswoman Lisa Clemens said. She added that "there are about 25 major milling companies so it's a very competitive business,"

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