Top 10 Brazilian Agrochem Companies in 2019: Mark ‘Record Sales’

The sale of agrochemicals in Brazil has registered revenues of US$ 13.7 billion in 2019, which represents a history record for the sector. 

In the past year, the revenue figures released by both AENDA (Brazilian Association of Generic Pesticides) and Sindiveg (National Union of Plant Protection Products Industry) have been identical. That proves this is the best performance ever of the pesticide sector.

The total sales of the largest crop protection companies operating in the country surpassed the best sales performance recorded to date, of US$ 12.25 billion registered in 2014.

According to the study commissioned by Sindiveg from the research firm Spark - Strategic Intelligence, the increase in revenue was 5.8%. However, according to statistics from Sindiveg, the sales of pesticides in Brazil in 2018 were US$ 10.52 billion. According to this data, the sales increase in 2019 compared with 2018 was 30.23%. In terms of volume, the amount of pesticides applied in 2019 in Brazil increased by 6.6% as against 2018, totaling 975,100 tons, according to the Spark study.

Júlio Borges Garcia, president of Sindiveg, justified the disclosure of the amount of pesticides applied because it is an effective indicator for pesticide consumption. “Talking about commercialization is very different from talking about effective application, because a product, even if it has been commercialized, may have been in stock or purchased for one crop and applied to another,” he explained.

Sales by category

Fungicides accounted for 31% of sales, while insecticides accounted for 29% and herbicides 27%. Bringing up the rear was the inputs “for seed treatment and other products”, with 12% of the total.

Soybean is the crop that consumes the most, with a 49% share (equivalent to US$ 6.7 billion). This meant a growth, in dollars, of just over 1% compared to the previous cycle (US$ 6.41 billion). Corn, with a 12% share, sugarcane (11%) and cotton (8%), together, should reach US$ 4.3 billion, with no record of relevant changes compared to 2018.

In related to the treated area, an increase of 8% was projected, totaling 1.6 billion hectares, which is due to the 2% growth in cultivated areas and the use of technologies to control the main pests in the field. Although there is an increase in treated area, the amount of pesticides used per unit area declined from 0.64 kg/ha to 0.63 kg/ha.

The State of Mato Grosso, which is the largest agricultural producer in the country, consumed the most crop protection products in 2019, with 24%. Next comes Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, which together reached 12%, followed by Paraná (12%), São Paulo (11%), the Brazil's new agricultural frontier Matopiba region (an acronym resulting from the initial letters of the four soybean states composing it: Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, Brazil) (10%), Goiás / DF (9%), MG (8%) and Mato Grosso do Sul (8%).

Last year Brazil granted registration to 473 crop protection products, which meant an increase of 5.34% compared to the 449 released in 2018. Of this total, 92% are post-patent products, which are new alternative brands for the same molecule that was already approved for use. Twenty-four new active ingredients and 40 organic products were also registered.

Changes in rankings after consolidation

With US$ 2,517 million billed last year, the leadership of agrochemical sales in Brazil remained with Syngenta, at US$ 517 million, an increase as compared to 2018. The company admitted that it hiked prices in Brazil to mitigate the devaluation of the Brazilian Real against the dollar. Even so, sales recorded by the ChemChina-owned giant performed strongly in the tropical country.

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In second place was Bayer, with US$ 2,022 million, a 20% increase over the US$ 1,685 million billed in 2018. It was the first year of the effective merger between the teams and structures after the acquisition of Monsanto. The company confirmed its optimistic projections made at the beginning of the year, with sales advancing in herbicides and insecticides on a basis adjusted to the loss of the Real's value.

BASF was the big news after overtaking Corteva and becoming the third-largest agrochemical company operating in Brazil in terms of revenue. It registered a significant increase of 32.22% in 2019 comparing with the previous year. BASF credits its success to the acquisition of Bayer's business in the Agricultural Solutions segment.

Corteva is the new entrant in fourth place from the crop protection segment in Brazil, with US$ 1,286 million in revenue last year. This was a 9% increase over the US$ 1,180 million traded in 2018. It has been on a trajectory in its fight to recover its losses after a breakup of the DowDuPont agricultural division in the previous year. The company pointed to insect control products as the protagonist in 2019 sales, especially in the last quarter of the year.

FMC was in fifth place, with US$ 1,090 million sold last year, an increase of 12% over the US$ 910 million in 2018. The company surpassed the Indian UPL, which concludes its acquisition of Arysta in February last year and sold US$ 1,025 million, against US$ 961 million billed in the previous year. At least in Brazil, the Indian company has failed to fulfill its goal of being “one of the top five” companies in the crop protection sector.

Adama, Nufarm, Iharabrás and Nortox, make up the 10 largest companies in operation in the country with the last-named being the only Brazilian in the list. One of the factors that explained Nortox's good performance was the launch of its fungicide Mancozeb, in addition to six other pesticide launches in 2019.

In this edition of the ranking, AENDA identified only the 10 largest agrochemical companies in Brazil. The entity combined the others and revealed only the total value of the group's total sales: US$ 1,300 million. Among these companies are Albaugh, Ouro Fino, Helm, Sipcam, Nichino, Tecnomyl, Rotam, CCAB, Cropchem, Alta, Sinon, Stockton, Prentiss Química, Avgust, Dinagro, Unibras, etc.

This article was initially published in AgroPages '2020 Market Insight' magazine. Download it to read more articles.