United Phosphorus acquires RiceCo in USA

United Phosphorus Limited (UPL) announced it has acquired RiceCo LLC, USA along with its subsidiaries and certain Assets of the International business of its Affiliate Company.

RiceCo based out of Tennessee in USA does business in more than 20 countries with major markets in the US and other countries like Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. RiceCo mainly caters to the rice market and has a wide range of product offerings based on the herbicide Propanil for this segment.

Propanil is a selective, post-emergence foliar applied, non-residual herbicide for the control of many important annual grasses, broadleaf and sedge weeds used in rice.

"RiceCo is a focused crop (rice) company and will benefit by leveraging UPL’s global sales and marketing network in taking its product offerings to the global rice markets. In turn RiceCo will provide rice farmers direct access to UPL’s current portfolio of products. In addition, the company will add strong brands for the Rice segment to UPL’s branded product portfolio” said Jai Shroff, CEO, UPL

This is the second acquisition of UPL in this calendar year following the acquisition of the global Mancozeb business and the Brand Manzate from DuPont in June this year.

UPL is the largest Indian agrochemical Company and is engaged in research, manufacturing, selling and distribution of agrochemicals and specialty chemicals across the globe. The Company’s revenue for the year ended March 2010 was about US$ 1,142 million.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.