From digitalization to biologicals: the future that a large company already manages

“It was a very interesting year that started, especially due to the price of grains, improving the profitability of the producers and the expectations. We all think about running a great campaign that was impacted by certain external factors associated with logistics and supply,” Fernando Lespiau (Photo), HELM's Global Sales Director, analyzed, to Infocampo.

Continuing with the highlights of this year, the manager said that, in recent months, there was a marked increase in the price of inputs, both in crop protection products and fertilizers, which meant increases between 50% to 100%.

In this regard, Lespiau acknowledged that the increase in production costs was closely associated with the freight value.

“When historically the freight value of a container was quoted around US$2,000 in Argentina, this year, it reached up to $12,000. That directly impacts the product. In addition, in the case of many products, no matter how much you want to buy and pay for that increase, there is no availability."

In another order of things, leaving the inputs, this year, the German company also managed to revalidate its IRAM ISO 9000 certification and aims to achieve a new certificate given by a comprehensive quality system by 2022.

HELM also had an important advance in digital development, after the presentation of SKYFLD at the beginning of 2020, and in the presentation of more sustainable solutions, such as its line of biologicals.

“What we are aiming for is that producers can digitize their daily processes. By digitizing all the processes in which different actors of the production process intervene, a better analysis of what happened at the end of the campaign can be achieved,” Lespiau explained.

“Regarding the new technology, we created a ‘gaming app’, “a tool that is very popular with the new generations,” he pointed out.

"It is a way of learning about new technologies, producing virtually in the batch, or answering questions, and thus facilitate entry to the new productive paradigm,” he said in conclusion.

Biological

The other point on which the company is working, at a global level, is biological products, "meeting the demand for sustainability that society asks for," the manager said. In this sense, certain chemical solutions, he acknowledges, can be replaced by biological ones, although the complementarity of efficiencies between products is the best alternative.

For this reason, HELM, in Argentina, concluded an agreement with the company “Protergium”, a division of the Terragene firm, which is in charge of developing biological products.

Under this alliance, a 100% biological seed inoculant for soybeans (Innobio Protergium) was launched, which is a microbial consortium, with soil organisms collected throughout the country, plus a biological funcigide (Trichoderma) and a stimulant (Basillus), on which a new formulation of this product is being tested. It will be launched next year, specifically for winter cereals.

In addition, they are working, in some Latin American countries, with a seed company called “Semillas Valle”, while in the United States, HELM has signed an exclusive distribution agreement for all Alltech products, which is a company focusedS on nutrition and animal health.