2015 was a year of many milestones. We had fewer serious safety incidents, improved returns and a record EBIT performance in Agribusiness. We drove productivity savings and returned capital to shareholders as part of a balanced allocation framework.

These were notable achievements, considering the challenging environment. Issues of oversupply, emerging market volatility and weaker GDP growth — facts of life in the commodity space overall — are relevant in ag and food as well.

We saw these headwinds materialize in multiple ways during the year. Slow farmer selling and spot buying by customers pressured margins in softseed crush and our U.S. grain business. Food & Ingredients (F&I) faced a nearly 4 percent drop in Brazilian GDP that impacted consumer spending.

Although we battled headwinds, we capitalized on opportunities. Bunge’s strong agribusiness position in Brazil enabled us to serve farmers who commercialized large volumes of crops and conduct an impressive export program. Agribusiness volumes in Brazil rose by 4 percent. We also leveraged good structural soy crush margins in the U.S. and Europe, and stepped up activity in Argentina as that country began to reform its agricultural policies.

Teams around the world secured hard-won performance improvements, including better China crushing results and solid profitability in sugarcane milling. While our view on the milling operation’s long-term place in Bunge’s portfolio has not changed, the business has fundamentally improved and we are in a better position to realize maximum value moving forward.

Weakness in the Brazilian economy will continue to pressure F&I earnings in the country, and slow farmer selling will persist in some markets, especially the northern hemisphere. But there are a number of positive trends in evidence around the world. The combination of these trends and Bunge’s strong positions gives us optimism about earnings growth and continued excellent returns.

Global demand for our core Agribusiness products continues to grow, and South America, Bunge’s largest region, will lead the market, with big crops, large export flows and strong margins. Our food business will continue to grow in North America, Europe and Asia, benefiting from leaner operations, consumer-driven innovation and tighter working relationships with key customers. Fertilizer should benefit as Argentine farmers commercialize stocks and invest in inputs. In Sugar, the market outlook is constructive. We are entering a period of declining stocks and the broader Brazilian industry, after several years of struggles, is unlikely to respond with quick supply increases. This should provide attractive margins for our milling business.

Looking further ahead, we see a clear path to realizing our earnings potential.

Market trends and improvements will play a role. The biggest part of our business is soy crushing, and the fundamentals in that sector are trending positive. Demand for meal and oil is growing and crush utilization rates are improving. The market is steadily cutting into overcapacity, and margins should improve as a result. With over 40 million tons of soy crush capacity, every incremental dollar of margin is a significant benefit to Bunge. At the same time, global trade in grains and oilseeds continues to grow, and Bunge will benefit thanks to our well balanced and highly efficient footprint. A return to more normal conditions in Brazil foods and U.S. grains will result in bottom line improvements from a streamlined asset base.

Most important, however, will be what we control ourselves, and here I have tremendous confidence. We have an outstanding team that has proven its ability to manage a variety of market environments. We are focused on the right things and have made measurable progress across all of our strategic pillars. Our balance sheet is the strongest it has ever been and will enable us to move quickly when opportunities arise. In 2015, we conducted a successful $500 million bond offering and saw our credit ratings improve. We now have BBB or equivalent ratings with a stable outlook from Fitch, Moody’s and S&P.

In total, Bunge is strategically, operationally and financially rock solid, well prepared for the future and committed to another year of progress in our safety, best in class, winning footprint and right balance strategies.

Our goal is a zero-incident culture. Our strategy involves the application of best-in-class practices in critical areas, especially the control or elimination of the five High Potential Exposures (HPEs) that account for the majority of serious injuries in our operations.

It’s a continuous journey that is not free of setbacks, but in 2015, we made progress, reflected in a 34 percent reduction in HPE lost-time incidents and a 17 percent reduction in total lost-time incidents.

Our approach to HPEs is anchored in our global safety campaign, Stand for Safety, which empowers employees worldwide with awareness and prevention tools they can use on the job, and requires supervisors to coach, train and engage frequently with their teams. We have expanded the program to include new training modules and supervisor led toolbox talks, and will extend it further in 2016. Highlights will include additional awareness and training efforts, investment in physical assets and improvements to safety process standards in critical areas, such as driving, combustible dust management and work at height.

The focus on Best in Class has spread throughout all of our operations. Enhanced analytics, optimized assets and improved processes generated over $100 million in savings in 2015, with contributions from each segment. We are on track to reach our 2017 savings targets.

Teams produced gains at nearly every point of our integrated value chain—from industrial efficiency and product quality enhancements in processing and packaging, through logistics, to downstream supply chain management and pricing. Following best-in-class principles, approaches pioneered in one part of the business are spreading to other operations. The Bunge Management Operating System, a manufacturing excellence methodology first introduced in F&I oil facilities and then applied in corn and wheat mills, is now being rolled out in crushing plants and refineries. And the Facility Analysis Program (FAP) is moving beyond soy processing and into F&I. In FAP alone, we have identified more than 1,000 improvement opportunities at 23 plants in eight countries. Over the next 15 months, the program is targeting 15 refineries with the largest financial opportunities.

Bunge’s existing footprint is strongest in the world’s most important regions, and we continue to pursue efficiency improvements in established regions and expansion in high growth areas. We are taking many of these steps through partnerships to reduce capital requirements and unlock additional capabilities.

In 2015, we formed a joint venture with the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co., and together invested in CWB and established G3, a Canadian export oriented grain company. The combination of Bunge’s existing Canadian grain operations and CWB’s network of interior origination assets creates a strong new competitor in the country. That partnership and a revitalized export terminal in New Orleans — renovation of which is currently underway — provide more efficient conduits for North American export flows. We are executing a similar strategy in Brazil, via our northern export corridor assets. A new, co-located crushing facility at our expanded export terminal in Nikolayev, Ukraine will expand our export program in the Black Sea region, which is an area of critical growth in grain and sunoil exports.

A winning footprint is not related just to Agribusiness. The 2015 addition of the Pacífico wheat mill, which will replace two older Bunge facilities, secures a leading position in the São Paulo market, Brazil’s largest, with a higher efficiency asset. It is an example of how we are strengthening a profitable, core F&I business, and how our four strategic pillars complement each other to create an effective approach.

Our goal is to build a business portfolio in which value-added operations account for 35 percent of EBIT. In addition to moves like the Pacífico acquisition, we are extending our value chain into new markets. In Argentina, we have successfully built an F&I franchise, with packaged and bottled oils, oilseed derived ingredients, and wheat and rice products for domestic and export customers, where we previously had only an Agribusiness value chain. EBIT in Argentine F&I has grown by over four times in the past five years. The acquisitions of Whole Harvest Foods and Heartland Harvest in the U.S. show how we are acquiring new capabilities, including expeller pressing, new refining technology and a broader milled ingredient portfolio, through bolt-on acquisitions. Our joint venture with TerraVia, formerly Solazyme, has a promising pipeline of algae-based oil and ingredient products.

The ultimate foundation of the Company is our team, and we have an outstanding one. For Bunge, being a diverse, multicultural team is both part of our DNA and a conscious choice that we pursue with energy and passion.

A key behavior we promote among our colleagues is to “be an owner.” We expect much of each other and demand more of ourselves; show the courage of our convictions and applaud it in our colleagues; insist on clarity and accountability, and deliver both at all times.

We will continue to imbue the concept of ownership throughout the Company and develop the next generation of leaders by reinvigorating our longstanding development programs and investing in new HR and learning management systems.

Our sense of ownership encompasses the entire value chain, from farm to table. It is a view that has motivated our decade long commitment to sustainability, a journey in which we have demonstrated leadership in the form of the Soy Moratorium in Brazil, engaged with other value chain participants in multi-stakeholder groups like Field to Market and Bonsucro, and set and achieved progressively more ambitious goals to shrink the GHG, water and waste footprints of our own operations. A recent highlight was the recognition of Bunge by EXAME magazine as the most sustainable company in Brazil. It was a great and deserved honor that is a testament to the hard work and leadership of our Brazil team, owners all.

We’re increasing our pace of change and depth of commitment in three key areas: building 21st Century value chains, integrating sustainability more fully into our long-term strategy and governance, and increasing our transparency and advocacy.

In 2015 we became a signatory to the CEO Water Mandate, a UN-sponsored effort to address critical issues of water scarcity and human rights; issued a commitment to zero-deforestation supply chains; and, in partnership with TFT, worked to implement our 2014 palm oil sourcing policy. In Q4 2015, approximately 67 percent of our global palm oil volumes were traceable to the mill level. By the end of this year we also expect to issue a plan for the implementation of our zero-deforestation commitment.