The founders of ADM started a related business as early as 1902, but only registered the name Archer Daniels in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. in 1905, and ADM is now headquartered in Dicdor, Illinois, USA. After the company was founded, ADM expanded its presence to Wisconsin, New York and other places as it grew in the following years. When the capital slowly accumulated, in 1923 after the acquisition of Milan Linseed Products Company (Midland Linseed Products Company), the company officially changed its name to Archer Daniels Midland, the famous ADM company was born.ADM gradually expand the scope of business, adding the flour industry, food processing industry, feed industry, special food industry, food processing industry, food processing industry, food processing industry, Feed, Specialty Foods, Cocoa and Nutraceuticals industries, among others. In the 1980s, ADM went global, establishing an Asia-Pacific subsidiary in Hong Kong in 1983, expanding into Europe in 1986 with acquisitions in the Netherlands and Germany, and entering China in 2000. Today, ADM has become a huge and intertwined multinational corporation. Its businesses include food, beverages, therapeutics, and feeds,*** with some 270 diverse manufacturing plants around the world engaged in the processing of cocoa and corn, and the production and marketing of food additives, nutritional supplements, steroids, edible oils, and more. In addition, it is also engaged in large-scale industries related to agricultural and food reserves and transportation. Today, ADM is the world's No. 1 grain and oilseed processor, the largest soybean crusher and corn-based additive manufacturer in the U.S., the second-largest flour mill in the U.S., and the world's fifth-largest grain export trading company.
Among the four major grain traders*, ADM has always been known for its focus on research and development, and has continued to support its growth through chemical research, and now has a good relationship with Procter & Gamble. ADM quickly became the largest bioethanol producer in the U.S. almost as soon as biofuels became available. When President George W. Bush proposed a biofuels program, ADM supported it with both hands and recruited the former CEO of an oil company as its CEO. In 2007 alone, the company invested more than $1 billion in activated fuel, making it the world's number one producer of activated fuel ethanol. The company also claims to be investing $2.3 billion in the field by 2009 and is engaged in a series of partnership programs with companies such as Volkswagen.
Yihai (China) Group, formed by ADM and Singapore's WILMAR Group***, is a typical example of ADM's expansion in China. Yihai Group was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Lujiazui, Shanghai. At present, the group has 38 directly held factories and trading companies in China, in addition to participation in Luhua and other domestic famous grain and oil processing enterprises, factories throughout Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and other major coastal provinces and Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Heilongjiang, and other inland areas, trading companies and offices have been covered in addition to Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan outside of the country. The trading companies and offices have covered the whole country except Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The group's annual oilseed crushing capacity of 10 million tons, oil refining capacity of 3 million tons per year, the capacity of 1 million tons of fractional extraction, the export of soybean meal accounted for more than 70% of the country's total annual exports, is one of the largest oil, oilseed processing enterprise group. In the vigorous development of fats and oilseeds, oilseeds processing projects on the basis of the group's comprehensive entry into wheat, rice, cottonseed, sesame, soybean protein concentrate and other grain and oil deep processing projects, and at the same time has invested in the holding and participation in the railroad logistics, storage bases, shipping, shipping and other auxiliary companies, to the multi-species operation and diversified development. As early as 2005, Yihai Group began to shift its investment direction to other agricultural products processing fields, investing in Yihai Rice in Heilongjiang, and in December 2005, it set up Yihai (Jiamusi) Grain and Oil Industry Company Limited, which is responsible for the Group's business development in Northeast China. Yihai (Jiamusi) Cereals and Oil Industry Co., Ltd. has cooperated with Heilongjiang Yihai Cereals and Oil and Heilongjiang Dragon Cereals Reserve Company to build large-scale storage bases; carry out domestic and international trade in rice and corn; set up a logistics company to link up transportation channels; build processing bases for corn and rice; and set up large-scale processing bases for grains in Jiamusi and other main producing areas of high-quality rice and soybeans. The Yihai Group has established a comprehensive grain and oil business network in the three eastern provinces and parts of Inner Mongolia.
*Four of the world's top 500 companies, namely ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, are known as "ABCD" according to the first letter of their names.