Oh, Darling Ingredients, Randy Stuewe, it's a pleasure to have you with us today, sir. Maybe, you know, just to kind of start off, any opening thoughts, remarks as we enter 2026, and then we can dive into questions?
Yeah. Yeah, it's glad to watch 2025 go away. You know, if you kind of reflect back on 2025, it was a year of, you know, an administration transition. Clearly, this is a clean energy, renewables, what we're talking about a little bit here. We've got a couple businesses here, but clearly, the one that has eyes, you know, focused on it is our big three renewable fuel factories on the Gulf Coast, and they've been waiting all year on policy clarification. You know, it almost feels as I would leave, and the audience today, we're really close.
Yeah.
I think it's a really positive outlook for 2026. I mean, but you know, I'll reflect a little bit, and you know, and with Brad and Suann here, you know, we do our little whiteboard. We do a cash planning exercise for the company for the year, and it was a... If you went into our room, we said, "Well, 2025 earnings at Diamond Green Diesel can't be worse than 2024. It has to get better." Well, that would've been true if we would've gotten any policy clarifications, but clearly, mandated businesses really only work when that mandate is adequate for them, and you know, the ultimate economic lesson is you produce one more gallon than the mandate, and it's not worth much.
Yep. Yep. That's fair. Maybe give, you know, to, like, touch on the policy piece first, I guess. You know, timeline seems to be, again, getting pushed out a little bit. We had the shutdown, and, yeah, maybe it, if you could share what you're hearing on the ground from folks.
There we go. Sorry about that. No worries. All right, now we're better. Yeah, I mean, the you know, we've been deeply involved as a company with trade organizations in trying to shape policy. Remember, the policy side here is not about green energy or climate change. That narrative has kind of been muted, and it's always been about at least in our view, about ag policy. You know, half of the corn crop, half of the bean crop go into green energy in the USA and North America, and so getting clarity on an improved Renewable Fuel Standard or Renewable Volume Obligation was priority one this year. You know, I think clearly farm prices, and we live in the livestock ag community, the farmers hurt.
Then you play the Trump game with all the tariffs, and it just exacerbated that issue all the way back to the farm, and when you lose your number one customer in China, and not only China for soybeans, but China for a lot of products, especially even from our industry, for pet food grade products and other trades that we make to them. And so, you know, clearly, the message was, "You can fix the farm community with a larger RVO." Okay, that resonated. We got complete alignment all the way through the EPA and, you know, the, believe it or not, you got to go down another level. It's called the Office of Air and Radiation, is in charge of making that rule.
You know, obviously, you always ask much higher, knowing that you're gonna get something lower, but we actually got closer to the higher ask now, and so that seems to be really, really positive, you know, 5.6 billion gallons. Then the EPA has gone through this, trying to get rid of this backlog through the court system of all these small refinery exemptions, which were designed to not penalize, I don't know, under 75,000 or whatever barrel per day units, and they've done a really remarkable job of getting rid of that backlog, and there were some winners, there's some losers there. Now they're out to, you know, what is the new process for granting a small refinery exemption, and what's the impact on the gallons made here?
They threw out a rule here, I don't know, end of September or something like that, or a proposed rule, you know, 50% small refinery exemptions or 100% reallocation, and then they put it out for public comment, and what I hear is they had three piles: 50, 100, and all other. You know, if you had to be a handicapper on it, you'd probably guess, you know, 50% small refinery exemptions. Don't know why it wouldn't be 100, don't know why it wouldn't be 0, but that seems to be... We keep saying that they're trying to create a win for everybody, and a win is across the broad spectrum of, you hear the word in the administration, affordability. Okay, that's the cost of food, right?
And then you hear all of this industry being attracted through these trade deals. They need a lot of energy. They need water, they need natural gas, they need electricity, they need infrastructure, and so you've got to keep it safe to the consumer and don't let energy prices go up. You've got this middle piece here called the farmer and the ag community that's caught a little bit in the crossfire of what the impact or the unintended consequences of a much larger RVO, some small refinery exemptions, and then, you know, the lobby in D.C. that got the higher volume obligation, their pitch to us, "Throw out all the foreign feedstocks." Throw out all the foreign fuels, build a wall, make the U.S. like Europe.
What they didn't understand was, well, if you build the walls high enough, and feedstocks can't trade freely in the world, where are they gonna go? They're gonna go to the next best home. They're gonna be converted into the highest value product, biofuel, and then they're gonna come in, and so then it's an unintended consequence. We kind of fundamentally believe that they're trying to thread the needle right now and balance the SRE. What? How are they gonna handle imported feedstocks, and then how do they handle imported biofuels? Now, if you look at it today, between Trump's tariffs and then not qualifying for 45Z, it really, it's kind of immaterial. So at the end of the day, you know, this thing is, and has been bullish since it's been announced in July.
But, you know, what's your indicator that it's real? Well, RINs. RINs are, if you looked at 2026 RINs today, they're up to $1.18, so they're starting to move. But the, you know, I guess if you're an obligated party, you say, "Until we know the rule, don't do anything." And clearly, there's a lot of money in DC still running around trying to shape policy, but I think we're there. I think we're within, you know, whether it's, you know, this week, next week, or the first week of January, that I think everybody's gonna get what they had hoped for here.
Got it. That's a good overview. Thanks for that story. So, okay, so basically, sometime in the next few weeks, potentially first week of January, we could hear something on the RVO. In terms of reallocation, you're suggesting that it could be, I think, could go down the line of that 50%, not to put words in your mouth, but is that kind of what you're hearing, 50%?
Mm-hmm.
Okay. And then on the 50% RINs, I know that you guys have a view. You guys have provided comments there as well, and I think, to your point, you're saying 45Z has already kind of, already made an impact, so that doesn't necessarily impact the complex. Is that a fair way to kind of summarize it?
Yeah, it is, and I think the one piece that's got some hesitation about it is, how do you enforce the 50% RIN on, you know, on imported feedstocks or biofuels? And so how they get there and how they play, you know, in the meetings that I would say we've participated in, we said, as we taught them about, you know, how feedstocks trade around the world, we're the largest waste oil trader in the world, and we're the largest importer of waste oils in the world to the United States. And so-
Yeah
... when we started saying, "Well, if you don't let, you know, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, UCO, Argentine, Brazilian, Colombian tallow in here, it's just gonna go to another conversion point and come in here." Clearly, the administration didn't, doesn't understand commodity economics. Once you showed them that, and they said, "Well, what's your solution?" I said, "Well, just don't give a RIN to foreign-generated biofuels unless it's made with U.S. feedstock.
Yeah.
I don't know if a light bulb went on. I don't know if we met the right people that get it. I'm hoping they do something there.
Got it. That's helpful. That's helpful. Okay, and then maybe moving on to the other, you know, kind of, market, the LCFS. We haven't, you know, I think, it came into effect in late June. We have, you know, we don't... I think we just have 2Q data, right, from CARB, so we haven't necessarily seen a lot of movement in LCFS pricing. Could you maybe share some thoughts there on what is the market potentially waiting for? Is it the 2Q data or how does-
Yeah
I think that's gonna be.
You know, clearly, the you know, as I started the earlier comments of twenty twenty-five, you know, we came into the year believing that by February or March, we'd have LCFS, the new accelerator program. It would kick in June one, and then it got delayed and delayed, and now it's really, it's a twenty-six program. Ultimately, you know, there's limited obligated parties there that truly have to trade that. But, you know, at the end of the day, you're starting to see the bank come down. Prices, the last time we got to a surplus, they didn't react until we started to get to break that kind of equilibrium line.
So, you know, I think we would say that LCFS prices, which are meaningful, especially to a big RD maker, probably the back half of the year of 2026 will start to react.
That's helpful. And then on 45Z, you know, before moving on to the core business, I guess just want to touch on that. You know, you obviously you guys have started monetizing 45Z credits. That's great for the balance sheet. How do you kind of see that shifting in 2026? I think SAF 45Z comes off a little bit. What other avenues you're looking at in terms of feedstock use, where you can squeeze more 45Z per gallon in 2026?
Yeah, and I think 45Z for the audience, I mean, clearly, it's a very complicated tax rules. We felt very clear and along with our partner, Valero, and how we were generating, accounting them, and then, you know, as we decided or we needed to take them to market to sell, you know, while it's a market that's been around for a long time, there hasn't been really in the accredited space of RD and an RD producer out there. And so the first trade was, I told Brad, our CFO, I said, "Just get it done." You know, you've seen the proceeds there. It was in the low 90%. Had to have insurance. Why? We're not investment grade. Well, okay.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we could be, but we chose not to be. Now, then, that's the first monetization. This, I think, is a hundred and a quarter, and I think we'll get another hundred and a quarter to a hundred and fifty done this year, and those discounts keep improving... and I see twenty-six, because you kind of had to build the straw man and, you know, you had to teach people how it worked, and you had to figure out what guarantees did they need, and if there was a, you know, a government audit and all this noise that's out there. I think that's really behind us now, and so, you know, clearly the market's trading out there.
The other issue we ran into was no one really knew what their tax liability was, you know, June, July of this year. But by September, now we're seeing people scrambling, and we have a great lineup of interested parties.
Got it. So do you think that kind of, I guess the discount shrinks over time from, like, low nineties? 'Cause for example, if you look at other credits, like 45 X, for example, those trade at, like, $0.95 to the dollar.
Yeah.
So do you think 45Z could kind of hit that range as buyers get more comfortable with it, or do you think it's still gonna be in the low nineties?
I think it'll... You know, I think you've always got counterparties and brokers involved. You know, I think if you get towards that 93%-95%, that's about the best you're gonna do.
Got it. Got it. That's great, Randy. And then just kind of wanted to, you know, pivot to SAF real quick. I think going into, you know, 2026 and for, in the 3Q call, you had mentioned that a lot of your SAF has already been sold out.
Mm-hmm.
How do you... Maybe if you can broadly talk about, you know, how your contracts are structured in terms of, like, how do you manage? Is it all, like, volumetric based, or is it price based? How do you, you know, account for the movement in credit pricing? If you can share some thoughts there.
Oh, with SAF?
Yes.
Yeah, I think, you know, first thing is the SAF business has been far more complicated than we probably anticipated. I always look back a couple of years ago, we would've thought that there would've been an open bidding war for every gallon or physical gallon, and what you learned as you started to build your book was it's airport by airport, in-wing distributor by in-wing distributor, and then ultimately to the carrier. So there's, you know, several parties, three or four people, you know, that have to be involved. While you may sell Shell or you may sell Exxon, but Exxon has to sell World Fuel, and World Fuel has to sell JetBlue or United, and so fairly complicated trade.
You know, we went into it believing that SAF would earn somewhere between $1 and $3 premium to RD. We're there. We've got a very significant book on already for 2026. It's a blend of voluntary, it's a blend of export to Europe and other parts of the world. I think the mandates continue to grow. It's a good business as we go forward. You know, there's the few senators and representatives in the Midwest have now signed on to take that premium back up to $1.75 a gallon. So well, you know, it's starting to...
What's interesting to us is we've been invited now to be part of a narrative in DC on SAF, and so this is the first time that the Trump administration, or at least the staffers, have shown trying to learn what it is.
Right. Because even in states, you're seeing states have their own incentives for SAF as well. Like, are you... Is that where you are focused on in terms of marketing SAF? I mean, like, just want to figure out where else are you shipping SAF in the U.S. and in Europe?
Mm-hmm.
Just talk more about where your allocation is or where your focus is.
It's really just a, you know, it's dependent on who you're selling. It's just a blend of it.
Mm-hmm.
You know, it's, there's some that's going into Europe, some into the U.K., some to Canada, and some to the U.S. You know, it's a... Yeah, I always laugh back, and I, I know I get in trouble sometimes for this, but, you know, someone got me on the White House roundtable, and the United CEO said he was gonna buy 1.8 billion gallons of SAF. I think we sold him 10,000 gallons.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I'll call him out on it, but...
Fair enough. Okay, perfect. You know, maybe I guess sticking to RD real quick, in terms of... So, like DGD one is still idle, right? How do you kind of think about what margin levels do you need to see for that to kind of come back?
Breaking news, all three units are operating.
Oh, okay, perfect.
We've got a... You know, we might be turned down a little bit from full capacity yet, but we wanted to get the supply chain ready.
Mm-hmm.
You know, once again, showing our confidence that we're gonna get a positive RVO and trying to bring up a mothballed facility. Now, remember, why was it mothballed? This is a catalyst game. Why burn up catalyst and make zero?
Yeah.
You know, the margins have improved in the business, and we think coming into 2026, they could move pretty quickly, and we wanted to be ready to take advantage of it.
Got it. And then maybe thinking about 2026 maintenance and downtime. Do you... I know that you had some downtime in, like up to DGD three, DGD one. How do you think about maintenance in 2026?
I think-
Or do you think it's gonna be running at full capacity if assuming, you know, the RVO kind of comes through and we are contemplating?
Yeah, I think we have possibly one turnaround scheduled in 2026. We did all three this year.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's unit number two, and we'll depend on that. But remember, we have the ability. It's our game of fluids and hydraulics. You can turn up the other two to offset most of your downtime. So, you know, if you said: what are we. You know, somewhere, but it just depends on how the RVO comes out. You know, it could be 1.1 billion gallons; it could be 1.2 billion gallons next year.
... Okay, that's all. Maybe, yeah, just moving on, you know, to feed real quick. Could we kind of, you know, before, obviously, we can look at fats, you know, fat pricing, UCO pricing, but maybe before that, you can touch on how your proteins complex is shaking out a little bit. Maybe some color there in, you know, so far in 4Q, and then also just thoughts on 2026 as well.
Yeah, you know, I think, as we gave, you know, kind of a forward look into Q4, it felt pretty similar to Q3. Fat prices came down just a little bit, $50 a ton here, $100 a ton, Brazil, and a little bit in Europe, but Europe's pretty steady. You know, what you saw in Q3 was, once again, an ambition or an expectation that the RVO was gonna get published, and these facilities were gonna wanna restart. They wanted to rebuild their supply chain. So, you know, as the demand came, the price moved up, slaughter moved down, summertime, et cetera. So it's backed off. Remember, biodiesel and other users of waste fats in the renewable business, winter is a little difficult because of infrastructure to melt the raw material.
Typically, that picks up. So I think it, from a fat complex, it's... Next year is, right now, if, you know, as we're at and expecting, we're at the floor, is what I would call it. The RVO, how we determine feedstock availability, meaning foreign biofuels and foreign, you know, feed into our system and the tariffs around them, you know, I think feedstocks could be explosive next year. So, you know, I think, we feel pretty confident in where we're at, that the current run rates, you know, in Q3, Q4 is carrying into next year. I always caution people, you know, there is seasonality in our business. Q1 is a little weaker.
Q2 picks up, you know, around the world because it's a little easier to run a plant when it's not really cold. And so, you know, that, that's kind of the fat side. You know, you, you're starting to see, you know, it, it's just gonna come down to really, at the end of the day, if that RVO is in that 5 billion, 5.6 billion, with a 50% reallocation, it is very, very bullish. And so we've been saying that since June or July. The protein side, a little more complicated, in the sense because of trade flows. It's probably the one piece that's been most impacted by the tariffs.
Really, a significant portion of the poultry byproduct meals, chicken meal, as we call it, ends up in aquaculture in Asia. You know, tariff on to China, tariff off to China, tariff on to Vietnam, then it's off. So, we've got a little bit of a backlog in both those and the feather meals. They're down significantly from prior year. If those come back, you know, we're setting up for a really great year next year. It kind of feels like the trade with China is starting to head the right way here.
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair.
Because every time the window, a ninety-day extension or a thirty-day, immediately, the traders step in again. So we know they need protein. You've seen the strength in the soy complex, so the crushing capacity in the world's running at record levels, and soybean meal prices are fairly strong.
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Maybe just going back to the fat pricing. Obviously, we are seeing it kind of come off, right, from 3Q. It's down, like, I think 10-15%, if I'm not mistaken. But also, I know that you guys have a lag in your system as well, right? So if I'm thinking about 4Q, it's not gonna be especially for the feed segment, I guess, because it has offsetting with, you know, DGD. But how do you think about lag, I guess, you know, in terms of in the feed segment, and then also how that rolls into DGD?
Yeah, and so, you know, I think Q4, remember, we're the supply chain or pipeline to DGD out of our system, at least in North America. It's a 60-day, you know, train turn, if you will. And so, you know, that was sold in, you know, September or October, and October for November. And then, you know, so any type of that will play out in December, January. And that could be, you know, Q1 could be a little weaker as it... But, you know, then at the end of the day, you know, you're always playing catch up if you get in a market that's spiking-
Yeah
... You're paying your raw material suppliers more, and you've got forward sales at less. So, you know, that, there's a little bit of a zigzag or your lag, as you call it.
Got it. That's helpful. And then, maybe just kind of to, you know, to touch on, food real quick. I think we have seen steady kind of improvement in margins, you know, like over the few quarters. And also, you've talked about Nextida, and then you're introducing a newer, Nextida brand, I believe, in 2026. Can you talk a little bit more about these products? And then also, just any updates that you have on the, JV that you've announced earlier this year.
Yeah, you know, and so the collagen business is a natural extension of our, you know, feedstock supply of raw materials around the world. You know, from the slaughterhouse, that's a skin or a bone. You know, it's comprised of really three product lines today, maybe four, gelatin being the largest in the world, confectionery, some industrial in there, pharmaceutical in there, then hydrolyzed collagen, which is water-soluble for predominantly health and wellness, and then taking the hydrolyzed collagen and separating the individual peptides, that would be the Nextida line. Each one has a different value proposition. We're about 60/40, you know, gelatin collagen today. Ten years ago, that was about 99/1. Margin structure is significantly better, although it's come down because of more supply in the world.
Ultimately, the Nextida line, which was designed to create a health and wellness protein, the first one we launched is a GLP-1 alternative called Nextida GC, glucose control or glucose moderation. We have just finished the second round in a very significant clinicals. Hopefully, we'll put some press out on that shortly. But really, at the end of the day, it's as you eat, your body converts things to sugar. You go up, your insulin or glucose spikes and goes down. This moderates it, I think, about 42%, so it levels you off. Pretty fascinating stuff, and we did the first initial clinicals.
It probably, you know, for really not our expertise, so we were learning along the way, how big these clinicals needed to be, how long they take, and how many- what's your sample size, and we think we're at a level now where we can truly get the CPG guys to take a super serious look at this. We're selling the product today, but we're selling it into supplement distributors today. We need... If you think of between, behind our hydrolyzed collagen business, there was, the Vital Proteins was the brand that built us. And then, there's a long story there, but at the end of the day, that company was bought out by Nestlé, and you put the Nestlé marketing machine, health sciences behind this, and I think you've got some pretty fascinating growth.
The second one, clinicals we're wrapping up here is on brain health. Hopefully later this summer, I'm already in 2026. Like I said, I wanted 2025 behind me. In 2026, that product will be launched, and, you know, each one has a different category. It goes to each one has a different margin structure. We, Bob and I have tried to always describe it to people and say, "Well, how big can it be?" And we said, "Well, if we're half as successful in the peptide business as we were in the hydrolyzed collagen, we'll double the earnings in the food sector." That's a big number. And so then that leads into the joint venture. Why? Why do the joint venture? And number one, there was a willing deal seller.
Part of my life is traveling the world and meeting all these private owners and, you know, hopefully breaking bread, having wine, and one day when there's a succession issue, and, then my phone rings. And this has been 10 years in the making, and it's the number 3 producer in the world. They have factories where we don't have factories, 2 in China. We have 3 in China, but they have 2, one in fish collagen that we want to be in. Santa Fe, Argentina, up in northern Brazil, Davenport, Iowa, Nienburg, Germany. So, ultimately, it's a nice fit for us. As we looked at our model, we said we believe so deeply in these peptides that we're out of extraction capacity.
The cost to build in our business today, whether it's rendering or collagen, has tripled in the last five years, and so, you know, a build versus buy analysis, and here was a non-cash deal that allowed us to go. If you think about it, it from a capacity standpoint, 75-25, so we're gonna pick up another 50,000 tons of global capacity. Most of it, gelatin, but they also make some specialty products we don't. And then ultimately, the deal was done at 85-15. That was not a pleasant conversation to get to that, but that's representative of the value add that we have in our portfolio that we think we can bring to their factories around the world.
And then ultimately, you know, the pitch that I have, and I always ask people, you know, "Be patient." You know, we're trying to unlock value here. You know, this is a business that has... There hadn't, there's been a lot of opportunities for ingredient companies to acquire gelatin and collagen manufacturers in the world. They never traded. We've been the only buyer. It's because why? 80% of the product is fat and animal feed. The other 17%-20% is this nice value-added stuff, and then you've got to have access to beef skins and pork bones and beef bones and fish skins, and it's kind of a nasty business. You know, while it qualifies as a food grade business, the front end is pretty interesting.
And so ultimately, we think that, as we wanted to create a bigger company, we wanted to get the Nextida line launched out there. So it's gonna take us a year or two, and then we'll see if it makes sense to IPO part of it and unlock value for our shareholders. It gives us the opportunity this time, and really, that's, you know, it's, we're excited about it. And, you know, we've done a lot of, you know, i-banking, and, you know, we've had every some of the parts, everything you've ever wanted to see work done on it.
It should trade with its comps out there anywhere from 12- 16 times, and so, you know, it could ultimately be a $4-6 billion business in valuation on its own. And, you know, we want to own it, we want to continue to own it, 'cause we think it has a nice fit, but we also want to have a chance to, you know, let the shareholders enjoy owning part of it, too.
Understood. And then what would you, what do you think the timeline could be for that? Is it a few years, two, three, four, or five?
You know, statutorily, okay, just, you know, stay tuned, and then very shortly you will see an announcement on-
Mm-hmm.
... the JV being formed, that will trigger then two events. One will be all the antitrust filings that have to happen in the world. You know, there's no secrets today in the world. We have market share of about 30%. That's a big number. But we're in different products, and there's always competing products against these products out there. So we'll have to clear that. That could be six months to a year. And then once the...
Then you form the joint venture formally, and then, alongside that, one of the gating processes is, you know, we're having to break a very big unit off of the Darling system from a tax structure standpoint and restructuring the tax entity is, you're dealing with not so motivated governments around the world. And so that has to happen, and that could be, we could have antitrust clearance and still be waiting on tax restructuring to go forward. And then from there, you know, you pretty much have to have three quarters.
Yeah.
You know, and then Bob's got to have it SOX compliant. And so, you know, you're really looking realistically, late 2027 to go public with it.
Got it. And then what would you potentially do with the, you know, the cash flow at that point in time? I know that the focus has always been, and maybe we can talk about that now also, you know, focus is on balance sheet deleveraging, right? I mean, how do you think about year-end in terms of your leverage and then 2026?
You know, that, that's gonna be a high-class problem. You know, I think clearly, you know, our goal financial policy is to get to two and a half times. After that, then we'll kind of evaluate buybacks, dividends, and M&A. And clearly, you know, you take 15% of a $6 billion company forward or whatever, 10% of our share, you know, you can come up with some pretty big numbers here, and that gives us a lot of opportunity.
And there would be a preference for M&A versus, you know, buybacks, or, like, how would you rank them in a-
You know, it just depends on where the equity reacts now.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I think we wanna be in a position, even in 2026 here. We would've loved to have been in the buyback category this year, but we wanted to really get the leverage down, and we'll be very close to three times. You know, we did series of refinancings this year. The balance sheet's very, very strong. But, you know, buybacks have to be meaningful and consistent. They can't be a hundred thousand shares or a million shares here once every other quarter.
Yep.
When you commit capital to do that, we wanna be able to consistently do that. The M&A world, now, we don't see... We see a little bit out there, but most of it, for us, is just organic growth or delayed, you know, expansion growth. We're out of capacity in Brazil today. The animal numbers are increasing rapidly there. We're out of capacity on the East Coast of the United States, and we're out of capacity on the gelatin collagen in China today. I mean, we see a lot of opportunity for internal organic reinvestment, too, not big player acquisition-type deal.
Got it. And then maybe if you can kind of talk about, you know. So we talked about the margin profile for, you know, for the food segment. Maybe if you can touch on feed real quick in terms of, you know, since the Valley acquisition, there has been some optimizations that have been ongoing. I know that there has been some renegotiation of contracts. How have that played out so far, and then how do you think about. Obviously, it's dependent on, you know, where fat prices go, protein prices take us, but outside of that, you know, optimization internally, where are we on that so far?
Yeah, you know, we've made good progress. Each quarter has been better than the prior quarter, sequentially and year over year, and so I think you'll continue to see that tick up. You know, when you have 260 or 70 plants in the world, you always have, you know, kind of the, I always call it the 12-cylinder engine, and you're hitting on 11 of them. And so we still got some challenges in our rendering system globally, some in Brazil, some in North America, some in Germany. We're working on them, and every time we do that, it helps out.
Clearly, the message back to our raw material suppliers and I like to call them customers, partners, and suppliers, is our costs to do business are no different than yours. They've gone up since COVID. You know, I think the amount of raises given, you know, the cost of employees has gone up almost 23%. You know, and then the cost of steel, the cost of concrete, used to be, you know, you could build a tip-up building, that's tripled. You know, wire, all your type of control system. So, you know, the cost of a rendering plant when we built Grapeland, Texas, about 7-8 years ago, was probably $65 million. That plant would cost easily over $100 million now. And it's...
You know, you start putting returns on that with a newer cost of capital out here. You know, this is the first time in many generations they've seen inflation. They didn't know that an interest rate was, you know, 7%.
Mm.
Trying to incorporate returns on what we look at as our true cost of capital is forcing our team, our rendering and Rousselot and renewables team to make sure that we're making the right investments out there and getting the returns. Those make for sometimes difficult conversations with suppliers because it was an old industry, especially on the rendering side, that had a hurdle return rate that doesn't work. As we taken over the Valley Proteins, part of it was getting these contracts renegotiated. You know, I think that we said it'd be 25, 20-- we're in the last two right now, so.
I know that, I guess, yeah, we're getting close to time, but I just wanted to, you know, touch on two things primarily. I guess one, maybe, like, I read a misprint and ask, how do you kind of think about for the core business, what would, you know, your crystal ball say for twenty twenty-six? Any kind of thoughts there? I know that obviously RVO, we're still waiting on that, so, you know, I won't ask you to kind of comment on DGD, but how do you kind of think about the core ingredients business there, earnings power?
You know, I think we're comfortable with what we see today, and I always wanna give the safe harbor there.
Yeah.
You know, that carrying the run rate that we had in Q3 and Q4 here into next year, you know, give you a $950 million-$1 billion. If you get any type of movement from the RVO and fat prices start moving up, that's pretty much what we would say is a safe floor today, the way we look at it. But that, once again, the safe harbor statement is that doesn't mean, you know, we get shut down with all of our premium pet food products trading in the world are proteins. You know, we were waking up the other day with, you know, a significant portion of our collagen comes out of Brazil, and the Trump Lula brouhaha here and the tariff, I mean, that's giant money to-
Mm-hmm
To the consumer of our product here, and so as long as we can keep tariffs down, raw material supplies in the world are strong. People are still eating meat. You're gonna eat a little more chicken next year than beef. Probably take your Brink's armored car to go get your steak next year, but the cattle herd is showing signs of starting to rebuild. That's an eighteen-month deal here, but if you think back, it's no different than COVID, where Brazil slaughtered all their animals to feed the world, and that's why U.S. margins ran up, because there wasn't any supply in the world there. Now it's here. Brazil has the excess animals, and we're down, so you know, that's the global balancing of the business.
So, you know, what you're gonna see us do for next year, and we're not 100% set on this, but we'll guide, you know, we'll talk about quarter to quarter and try to talk about what it takes to achieve the year. And then Diamond Green Diesel, we'll talk about it in the moment, what we see right now. And, you know, ultimately, you know, it's just been too difficult to try to guide Diamond Green.
Of course. Yeah.
Yeah.
I definitely get that. Yeah, maybe, you know, one last part on just kind of, you know, what kind of keeps you up at night, or what are you looking forward to in twenty twenty-six, besides, you know, hopeful positive RVO?
Yeah. You know, I lay awake at night right now still wondering why it's taken so long to get an RVO. You know, I just think that. Obviously, sitting in my chair, the pressure's been extreme this year, trying to create opportunities and look at our portfolio and rationalize things and do this and that. It's difficult in commodity oriented and exposed businesses to, you know, to do much that really is material or matters. I think the one thing that is starting to wake me up right now is, you know, the different diseases in the world. As animal numbers pick up, we're seeing more and more disease, whether, you know, we've got Spain now showing some swine fever this morning. We have high -path avian influenza.
You got, I didn't even know what screw worm disease is coming out of Mexico right now. So, you know, those things create then trade barriers and disruptions, but none of them ever seem to be material, but kinda keeps me awake at night wondering what, what's the next thing. You know, as you enter winter, that's the time when the avian influenza and you've got, you know, we've just started to rebuild the turkey flock. We started the chicken side is still recovering a little bit from that side. But, you know, ultimately, I think the world's in, seems like it's in pretty good shape. Demand is good in the world. People wanna eat, people want, you know, people need two things. They need food and energy.
You know, if you say what changed from a year, you know, it's my last piece, you know, the world we were living in. I go back and look at my slides, and you know, we own the low-carbon CI oil field in the world. We were the ExxonMobil, and nobody in any meeting didn't mention the word decarbonization. No one knows how to spell that now. So the climate narrative, at least in the U.S., is muted-
Mm-hmm
... but we're seeing it pick back up around the world, and that's the SAF discussions, that's the RD discussions, and the mandates are continuing to grow, and people realize that it's a way of helping the ag community. So I'm pretty optimistic about 2026.
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Randy. Really appreciate it.