Pioneer Éléphant Vert ready to tackle next phase of growth

"In a nutshell we would like to continue on our mission of helping our customers succeed better in producing more, better-quality and more sustainable food. And hence to master the eco-agricultural transition. As a consequence, we intend to develop our marketshares worldwide. We have already very good penetrations in Africa, and in Europe and are convinced that America and Asia are great potential. We have all the assets to develop in these markets because we already offer answers to their agricultural crops with products with efficiency proven in difficult climates.  Europe is also a major market through our French subsidiary Bio3G," said Peter Brändle, General Director at Éléphant Vert in a recent interview with AgroPages.

He also shared his views on the Éléphant Vert's major markets and business mode, product lines and special features, productions sites and relevant capabilities, as well as future development plan etc.

Peter Brändle, General Director at Éléphant Vert

AgroPages: Can you introduce Éléphant Vert, milestone events, global presence and core competitiveness?

Éléphant Vert was founded as a pioneer to provide an alternative to synthetical fertilizers and crop protection products. Created in 2012 in Africa to provide first a natural solution against locust invasions with its product Novacrid, Éléphant Vert has since developed itself as a specialist of biosolutions.

Our mission is to develop innovative, accessible and efficient biosolutions to face and anticipate increasing social expectations of healthy, sustainable and social agricultural sectors.

Our offer combine products and services (training, soils tests…) in order to promote soil fertility and regeneration and to protect crops against diseases and pests. 

We base our core competitiveness on three qualities:

1. Our wide and complete range of biosolutions

2. Our integrated approach from sourcing/manufacturing to R&D in our laboratories and field sales forces

3. Our proximity to farmers, with a daily presence locally and globally

Our ambition is to continue to be a specialist leader of biosolutions in Europe, Africa and worldwide. We are already established in 9 countries, and commercially present in more than 36 countries in Europe and Africa. Main markets include France, Morocco and Mali.

With our 1000 employees worldwide, « we believe that sustainable agriculture is a fabulous key to succeed the ecological transition».

This conviction and vision drive all our actions.

AgroPages: To our knowledge, Éléphant Vert focuses on Europe and Africa markets, what is the biggest difference between them? What initiatives are taken to operate relevant markets respectively? What are the business modes?

As much there is no single Europe, there is no single Africa. The differences within these blocs can be sometimes bigger than across them. Our particularity is to address our markets in a customized way: Sometimes with a direct sales force directly to farmers, as for instance in France through our subsidiary Bio3G or in Kenia, or through partners, distributors and agents such as in Cameroon or Zambia.

If we want to generalize nevertheless, we can see three main differences: 

First of all, the agricultural crops are obviously different as a result of the different climatic zones and local traditions. Oftentimes, in Africa they are grown in very tough environment where hydration stress is much more common.

Second, also customer structures and practices differ. In Africa, they are more skewed to the extremes: either farmers with very small plots or large-scale cultivations (sometimes even government related). Processes tend to be also more manual which has an impact on how to formulate our products. 

Finally, in Africa logistics is even more of an issue, with less developed infrastructure for instance for refrigerated transport and more complicated border crossings.

AgroPages: Can you introduce Éléphant Vert’s product lines and special features? What are the strategies of product development and integration? What are the plans to develop new products? How does Éléphant Vert combine products with services?

Éléphant Vert has developed expertise in a wide range of crops particularly in Africa and Europe – field crops, vineyard, arboriculture, market gardening, tropical and industrial crops, fight against locusts and grasshoppers.

Our range is built on 3 categories: 

- Organic fertilizers and amendments, as well as deficiency correctors

- Biostimulants

- Biocontrol products

Over the next years, we would like to increase the share of the latter two categories. As a result, our R&D strategy as well as our partnership strategy are clearly oriented on biosolutions on biostimulants and biocontrol.

Our leader products are :

Novacrid which is a bioinsecticide recommended by the FAO as the alternative to chemical treatments for the control of locusts and grasshoppers, based on metarhizium acridum.

Ovalis / Xurian which is a biostimulant in which the bacteria (pseudomonas putida) catalyses transformation of the organic matter of the soil into humus. This facilitates the provision of the nutrients present in the soil for the plant. It substantially improves the yield, and quality of cereal, vineyard, fruits and vegetables.

Vitality which stimulates the general vitality of the plants. It helps to reduce plant stress thanks to its composition in laminaria. Its richness in silica allows the strengthening of plant tissues. The amino acids present maintain the homeostasis of plant cells, the glucans activate an anti-stress barrier and salicylic acid naturally stimulates the vitality of plants, thus improving the technical performance and profitability of farms

We also distribute very efficient biosolutions thanks to our strategic partnerships with suppliers like CBC Biogard, Futureco, Marrone Bio Innovation, or CABI.

Our strategy of services intends to help and assist farmers to succeed even more. We can do this thanks to our distribution network and local technical support. Consequently we offer farmers a wide range of services such as technical support, educational tools, diagnostics and analysis of plants and soils on residues or phytopathologies.

AgroPages: Could you introduce your company’s research& technology and production facilities and relevant capabilities?  

We have 11 productions sites (including 5 in France).  Each subsidiary has its own production site of compost and organic amendments. Bio3G in France also produces its own biospecialities.

Éléphant vert has 2 biotech factories, in France (Beziers - 2000m²) and in Morocco (Meknes - 4000m²), in which we are able to produce wide diversity of micro-organisms by mastering two industrial technologies: liquid state fermentation and solid state fermentation.

These actives are extracted and formulated according to our own needs; or tailor-made according to external customers' requests, always complying with the highest standards. All production batches are released after standardized analyses and are delivered with their certificate of analysis.

Within the Éléphant Vert group, we have been able to develop proximity and strong interactions between innovation and products. This requires a lot of interdisciplinarity between sales, marketing, regulatory, R&D and industrial departments, but it is the key to ensuring that our responses to customer expectations are so effective.

We control laboratory tests, testing in planta, regulatory validations, industrialization, and approval of active substance.

Within the factories, we have process development teams who adapt our industrial tools to receive new products, formulas or packaging from R&D. These teams also have a vocation to answer questions in the field such as the compatibility of our products with other agricultural inputs.

Finally, these elite engineers assess the industrialization potential of our partners' products on a pilot scale when they ask us to produce them on contract (Tolling). This activity tends to develop with more and more partners and volumes.

AgroPages: What's the biggest difference from other agri-inputs like traditional pesticides? 

All over the world, conventional agri-inputs are based on chemical fertilizers and pesticides for plant nutrition and disease management. This practice has contributed strongly to an increase in production but also sometimes generates substantial negative impacts on human and environment health.  

Biosolutions work WITH the nature and not against it.

Biopesticides are naturally occurring substances from living organisms (natural enemies) or their products (microbial products, phytochemicals) or their by-products (semiochemicals) that can control pests by nontoxic mechanisms.  

While traditional synthetic pesticides have hazardous effects, biopesticides are usually inherently less harmful/toxic and cause less environmental load or pollutions. They are also much more selective and targeted as they are designed for only one specific pest or, in some cases, a few target pests as opposed to chemical that have a broad-spectrum activity. 

AgroPages: What's the challenge in developing biological crop nutrition formulation in your company’s product lines? 

Of course, a big generic challenge is to find, screen, formulate, test and optimize the products. Since we deal with nature, we depend also on nature’s cycle to test the efficacy of our product. In vitro test can be a good proxy, but the real yard stick is efficacy in the field. If you wanted to test this in two to three natural cycles, you are already 3 years in waiting.

But the even larger challenge is regulatory approval. Whilst natural products are much less toxic and more targeted, often times the authorities demand the same kind of risk analysis and document as for synthetic ones. And with this come another few years of waiting (and hundreds of thousands of Euros) until we can offer the solutions to our customers.

Thanks to our day-to-day contact with farmers and our integrated and diverse teams, Éléphant Vert is well positioned to overcome these challenges and provide a wide range of solutions for our customers.

AgroPages: What do you think of the role of adjuvants in relevant product development? 

Adjuvants play a key role in enhancing the performance of plant protection or nutrition products. The use of suitable adjuvants ensures that the active ingredient reaches the target. The incorporation of adjuvants into the product during the formulation step (in-can adjuvants) or their addition, within the spray tank just before application (tank mix adjuvants) modifies advantageously the physico-chemical properties of the final products. 

They can reduce spray drift to non-target areas, minimize droplet bounce, improve wetting and adhesion, improve rain fastness and aid penetration and uptake of the active ingredient. 

AgroPages: How can biostimulants and biocontrol be used to give the best returns, for instance, right climatic conditions, equipment or technology support, or any other specific requirement for use of these products? 

As with pharmaceuticals, guaranteeing maximum effectiveness of biostimulants and biocontrol products requires the implementation of good practices from the manufacturing of these products to their use in the field. 

This is a way to reposition agronomy at the heart of agriculture. And this is also the opportunity for farmers to play a central role in the management of their crops. 

Each party has a role to play: the manufacturer, distributor and the farmer.  For example, this means 

- Good manufacturing practices (industrial know-how, batch stability, traceability, etc.)

- Rigorous efficiency tests relevant to the claims

- Training / information for distributors or end users: complete information materials on the optimal conditions of use of the products, technical support, or training days

- Guarantee of overall consistency of the product during storage (for certain products based on microorganisms, compliance with a precise storage temperature)

- Compliance with the manufacturer's or distributor's recommendations when preparing and applying the product to the field (temperature and humidity conditions, stage of application in the technical itinerary, dose, method of application, compatibility with other possible products)

- Support of digital agriculture and robotics can finally increase the efficiency of our biosolutions (dose adapted to the severity of the pathogen, to the type of weed)

AgroPages: What’s the future development planning of Éléphant Vert? Especially in new product development, market expansion, facility upgrading and value chain management etc.  

In a nutshell we would like to continue on our mission of helping our customers succeed better in producing more, better-quality and more sustainable food. And hence to master the eco-agricultural transition.

As a consequence, we intend to develop our marketshares worldwide. We have already very good penetrations in Africa, and in Europe and are convinced that America and Asia are great potential. 

We have all the assets to develop in these markets because we already offer answers to their agricultural crops with products with efficiency proven in difficult climates. 

Europe is also a major market through our French subsidiary Bio3G

Concerning products, we are working on developing innovative biosolutions to produce more and better. And of course we keep in mind to offer easily usable products by farmers and economically attractive. This is our way to contribute to respond to the challenges of global population growth and societal challenges, and with that ultimately to a reduction of the human footprint on the earth. 

If you'd like to share your company/solutions story, please contact Grace Yuan via: grace@agropages.com