One of the world’s largest crop science companies, ADAMA Ltd, has today announced it will take over French-Swiss crop protection company, SFP, for an undisclosed sum.

Based in Aix-en-Provence, France and in Sion, Switzerland, SFP was founded in 1987 and has developed a number of focused product positions within the $375 million European plant growth regulator and fungicide markets.

‘An attractive portfolio’

Alison Bosher, marketing and technical director for ADAMA in the UK, said: “SFP has an attractive portfolio of straight and differentiated mixture products that it markets in France and other key European countries.

“Among its most significant active ingredients are the plant growth regulators ethephon and chlormequat chloride, and the fungicides prochloraz and cymoxanil, as well as interesting mixtures of each of these.

“The combination of these products, which are highly complementary to ADAMA’s existing portfolio, together with our strong commercial network, bolsters our potential for future growth.

“In addition, some of the active ingredients in SFP’s products are also manufactured by ADAMA, enabling the combined businesses to benefit from the production efficiencies, quality assurance and traceability provided by backward integration.”

ADAMA

ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd started out life as Makhteshim Agan Industries, established in Israel almost 70 years ago.

Since then the firm has become a leading global manufacturer and distributor of crop protection solutions and the leading off-patent provider.

Today, ADAMA employs 7,000 staff, with its products reaching farmers in over 100 countries.

The transaction will be the firm’s second acquisition in Europe this year and also comes just a week after it announced it would take over Peruvian crop protection company AgroKlinge.

The deal is subject to customary closing conditions which are expected to be finalised within the coming weeks.