Lonza: Focus on niche markets and commit to portfolio enhancement & geographical expansion in Latin America

“For Latin America, Lonza Solution's Crop Protection is looking forward to operate in niche markets, supporting specific challenges of the Ag market with specific tools and technologies ranging from simple crop protection products all the way to functional and smarter products. Currently we are putting efforts in two main initiatives, portfolio enhancement and geographical expansion,” said Flavio Belluomini Cotrin, Associate Director at Lonza Crop Protection in Latin America in a recent interview with AgroPages. He also talked about Lonza’s  business  in Latin America, the company's portfolio and services, its target clients and business model, as well as future development planning etc.

Flavio Belluomini Cotrin, Associate Director at Lonza Crop Protection in Latin America

Please outline Lonza’s business in Latin America.

Latin America is an important global food supplier and agriculture player with technologically advanced production systems, great crop diversity and huge unexploited agricultural land. The global importance and crop diversity of our agribusiness sector offers great number of opportunities for crop protection companies, especially when it comes to agronomic management, to technology applications, to chemical and biological products, to crop nutrition, and digital applications.

Lonza Solution's Crop Protection and its in-house network has a unique position in this market as we can offer products and services to the B2C market segment , as well as to the B2B market segment  covering broad parts of  the agricultural value chain. Our Brazilian organization is able to customize market-oriented solutions by making use of our company's synergies by combining products and services from our global organization with our local market knowledge to address LATAM specific market requirements.

Could you introduce Lonza’s portfolio, services and others businesses related to agchems in Latin America? Is there any plan to launch new products and services?

Lonza Solution's Crop Protection business is a global business offering products and services to the Ag industry that range from adjuvants to foliar fertilizers and from crop protection products all the way to digital technologies. In addition, our Brazilian organization, which serves both the B2B and B2C market segments, has the capabilities to offer different crop protection testing and product formulation services at our 1,600 square meters large Center of Technology located in Salto (SP).

Our focus is to operate in niche markets where our portfolio has a good fit and where we see many opportunities to offer innovative solutions to the farmers. In Brazil, for example we offer special foliar fertilizers that promote natural resistance, which are branded under Vigrow family, and functional adjuvants with crop protection bioavailability enhancement effects branded under Celenco family.

Further and thanks to Lonza Solution's broad portfolio of offerings our Crop Protection business is able to connect our partners with other Lonza Solution businesses such as our CDMO organization that offers biological and chemical  production capabilities.

Lonza’s mid-term strategy is to expand both B2B and B2C business branches by introducing new products (adjuvants, fungicides, molluscicides, digital technologies) and services in and outside of Brazil.

Who are the major target clients of your company? What's the business model? What are the requirements in choosing clients?

Lonza Crop Protection has presence in all Latin America countries through different business models.

In general, Crop Protection and Nutrition companies are our main customers in the B2B segment. Here we usually take “tailor made” approach to serve our partners in the best way possible. Our customers usually are companies, which need to grow in a sustainable way launching outstanding solutions at competitive conditions to Ag market; in this segment performance and competitiveness walk together.

In the B2C segment, we work with national distributors outside of Brazil, while in Brazil we have our own organization serving the national market. To improve our service in Brazil we recently took a new commercial approach by moving closer to the market and developing our own sales force as well as new product offerings. Outside of Brazil we chose to rely on strong partners to take our portfolio to the market in other LATAM countries. For B2C main demand is to have high performance products, affordable and sustainable business margins.

What's the overall development planning of your company over the next 3-5 years in Latin America?

Our objective is to support yield and agricultural efficiency, directly and indirectly, applying robust technologies to crop protection and nutrition. In this scenario, Lonza Solutions has worked to develop technologies and solutions to support Ag companies and growers achieving higher level of efficiency.

For Latin America, Lonza Solution's Crop Protection is looking forward to operate in niche markets, supporting specific challenges of the Ag market with specific tools and technologies ranging from simple crop protection products all the way to functional and smarter products. Currently we are putting efforts in two main initiatives, portfolio enhancement and geographical expansion. For the portfolio expansion, we have different expertise and possibilities to bring good solutions to the market from different locations and synergies such as new crop protection mixtures, functional adjuvants, molluscicides and foliar fertilizers. For geographical expansion, we aim at growing our presence in Latin America.

What's your view on the market landscape of global agchem industry/market? What are the challenges to market growth?

With no doubts, Ag market is one of the vital areas for the world. The Crop Protection industry has been providing tools to farmers helping them to take on many production challenges. The Crop Protection industry continuously seeking the best way to serve this market according future perspectives and is now moving to greener and more intelligent solutions to continue supporting farmers and growers in an even more sustainable way, improving yield with less natural resources. Some barriers are expected such as worldwide regulation, R&D investment capacity, innovative tools balanced with Crop production costs and others.