U.S. Small-Business Rice Exports Sustain Jobs at Home

The Rice Company, a small business in Roseville, Calif., with offices in several southern states, is sustaining U.S. jobs and creating work for U.S. farmers, rice storage elevators and barge companies by exporting about 50,000 tons of rice to Mexico, backed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank).

Ex-Im Bank's Board of Directors approved a short-term insurance policy to cover a $15 million revolving credit facility which Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank, Houston, Tex., is offering the Mexican buyer, Industrializadora de Productos Agricolas de la Cuenca del Papaloapan S.A. de C.V. (IPACPA), to buy rice from The Rice Company and other U.S. suppliers around the country.

"This sale creates work not only for our company but for all of the people involved, including the rice growers in the Mississippi Delta, the people who truck the rice, put it in barges and storage elevators, unload it in New Orleans, and transfer it from the barge to the shipping vessel," said The Rice Company President and CEO Jay Kapila. "Ex-Im Bank's insurance enables us to provide customers with the financing facilities to buy the rice."

"Ex-Im Bank is pleased to support jobs in the U.S. agriculture sector by facilitating the sale of U.S.-grown commodities to overseas markets," said Ex- Im Bank Chairman and President James H. Lambright. "Providing this support is of special significance when we can help a small business, such as the Rice Company, grow by expanding international sales."

The Rice Company, with about 70 employees, trades 2 million tons of rice a year to Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. IPACPA of Veracruz, Mexico, which has a long-standing relationship with Ex-Im Bank, is buying the rice for processing and distribution to its customer base in Mexico. Ex-Im Bank's Houston Regional Office introduced IPACPA to the Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank in 2003.

Ex-Im Bank, the official export-credit agency of the United States, is in its 73rd year of assisting in the financing of U.S. exports, primarily to emerging markets throughout the world, by providing loan guarantees, export- credit insurance and direct loans. In fiscal year 2006, Ex-Im Bank authorized more than $12.1 billion, including nearly $3.2 billion for small business authorizations, to support an estimated $16.1 billion of U.S. exports. For more information, visit http://www.exim.go