Interview: New UPL reveals plans and first step in Brazil

 

In announcing the completion of the merger with Arysta LifeScience, UPL Limited talked to AgroPages and unveiled its upcoming plans in Brazil. According to Marcos Pellicer, Global Strategy and Innovation COO, the brand will continue to be UPL, but a new visual identity will be launched in May 2019.

 

Pellicer also announced a new concept: "OpenAg". This is the new objective of the company, which will work for a more modern, collaborative and open innovation. "There's incredible complementarity between Arysta and UPL, and now we've created a new way of looking at the crop protection business," Pellicer told AgroPages.

 

Although the companies are present in more than 76 countries, Brazil is an extremely strategic market in the plans of the New UPL, said Pellicer. He further notes that the newly formed company will maintain its "investment grade" credit rating by the agencies.

 

Pellicer also said that New UPL will work with more than 13,000 products registered worldwide. This is because the portfolio of Arysta, which has 6,850 products, will be unified with that UPL, which has 6,150 records. All registration processes already initiated in Brazil will be continued, and priority will be given to sustainable products, including some made from algae.

 

Pellicer also foresees the launch of three new products, which he predicts would become "blockbusters". According to Pellicer, they will be products focused on the control of Asian rust and resistance, and are expected to generate sales in excess of US$ 100 million.

 

Fabio Torretta, a regional leader of UPL Brazil, also spoke with AgroPages and stressed that the company will have a team of some 1,000 people in Brazil. Of these, almost half, or about 400, will be agronomists who will be in the field visiting producers to demonstrate the solutions that will emerge from the new company.

 

Torretta explained that the new purpose of UPL, of "OpenAG", is "relevant, authentic and distinct. This is why we want to mobilize and unite our approximately 11,000 direct collaborators around the world in the same direction - that of an open agriculture, of sustainable growth for all, based on a systemic program of plant protection."