Exclusive Interview: Farmers Know, They Can Get Better Harvest with DRAGON

Date:03-03-2021

Luis Xavier Quijano Garmendia CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD / OWNER of DRAGON

DRAGON is a proudly Mexican company that has led the national market for more than 85 years, supporting Mexican farmers. 

It has invested in state-of-the-art equipment, including its research laboratory, and together with a group of experts, always aims for continuous improvement and more effective and environmentally friendly agrochemical formulations with costing for the whole value chain. The company’s owner, Luis Xavier Quijano Garmendia, told AgroPages, that this is the reason why DRAGON is famous for its high-quality products, and how it has maintained a continuous output of leading services over its long history.

Please give us a brief introduction of DRAGON.

Our company is composed of a multidisciplinary team of professionals with extensive experience in crop protection, who direct our efforts towards achieving our purpose, which is to protect crops and offer better nutrition and well-being to people.

In order to satisfy the needs of our clients, we have two agrochemical formulation plants, with the first being located in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, and the second in Lerma, State of Mexico, where we also offer tooling services to multinational companies. We provide formulated products of the highest standards and quality, positioning ourselves in the market by having more than 100 trademarks and over 200 registration certificates.

What are your company’s main product lines? How many products can you offer to the market? Can DRAGON customize solutions for the diversified needs of farmers?

We know how important our clients are and their demands. Therefore, we have a wide portfolio of technological solutions focused on reaching the needs of Mexican farmers. We mainly have five product lines, which are fungicides, insecticides, plant nutrition, herbicides and adjuvants.

Could you please talk about your company's agrochemical formulation production and major formulation types? 

Our commitment to our clients drives us towards ensuring quality, to offer farmers the best products. For this, we offer formulations, such as WDG, FLOW, dry powders, wettable powders, emulsifiable concentrates, miscible liquids, concentrated suspensions, oil and water emulsions.

Currently we have just expanded our second plant in Lerma, State of México, to increase its production capacity, innovation and competitiveness in the market, in line with ecological and health standards while maintaining our lasting relationships with customers and suppliers and focusing on the safe use of our products and teamwork. We, therefore, gained an installed capacity of 40million kg/L in presentations ranging from 3 grams in sachets, 100ml in bottles, to pipes.

Do you offer tooling manufacturing services and did you ever cooperate with any clients?

We have been tooling for more than 15 years for multinationals and local companies, resulting from our considerable technological capacity and, above all, from our international quality processes. Our tooling services involve almost the entire process of the product, from formulating (WP, EC, WDG, AS, L, P, etc), packaging, labelling to storage.

Are biological products your company’s new business focus? Could you please talk more about your new organic solution, BioDragon? 

The organic market is growing rapidly, so DRAGON is creating a new business unit with the aim of participating in such a market. While we will continue to focus on the current market, BioDragon is expected to offer high performance biological solutions to reduce the chemical load used in our current food production systems. BioDragon will be launched in 2021 in the Mexican market, to satisfy the needs of farmers for excellent biological solutions that will enable them to ensure safety and increase the yield and quality of their crops, therefore, improving the performance of the sector.

Consequently, DRAGON is fulfilling its goal of protecting crops while achieving better nutrition and the well-being of the population. We want BioDragon to become a benchmark in the biological solutions market of Mexico in the shortest time possible.

How does DRAGON do its marketing in Mexico? What are the characteristics of the Mexican agrochemical market? How do you to keep farmers sticking to the company's brand and products? 

In order to talk about marketing, we must first mention the characteristics of the Mexican agrochemical market, which is extremely diverse and complex, and in which we can find different types of crops, biological problems, and diverse agroclimatic and cultural environments. These factors force us to adopt different marketing strategies around the country, through offering real solutions according to the needs of the Mexican farmer and attaining a strong position against our competitors, which are a very important factors for the success of marketing campaigns within the market. However the key factor in the Mexican agricultural sector is to be in contact with people and having relationships with business partners and users, as well as a continuous enhancing reliability and trust in the solutions we offer, which can only achieved by understanding the market and respecting and supporting farmers’ needs. For the past 85 years, DRAGON has offered high quality technological solutions, which have allowed us to offer the concept of quality and trust, accompanied by our solid brand, DRAGON®. 

DRAGON's growth is based on the trust of farmers and business partners. A determinant factor has been the approach of our commercial team of both technical consultants and development to demonstrate the efficiency of our crop protection solutions and, therefore, achieving their satisfaction, through a committed distribution channel. 

Show, demonstrate and convince are key factors.

Can you please explain your country's regulations and policies covering agrochemicals and formulated products? Are there any new policies that are beneficial or unbeneficial to developing local formulation production and sales? 

Regulations in Mexico are simple and good for crop protection products. For formulated products, we need to have a technical registration first, which requires 5batch, 6 pack toxicological studies and density report developed under GLP, additionally, manufacturing process and justification of impurities.

The requirements for formulated product include physical chemical studies depending on the type of formulation, ex: aquos solution, emulsion concentrate, soluble powder, wettable powder, etcetera based on CIPAC guidelines, maximum residue limits (EPA and OECD countries are accepted), field studies, and toxicity studies. You can access the toxicological category by using the technical tox studies or develop oral, dermal and inhalatory studies of the formulated product.

The problem in Mexico is the time it takes to obtain a registration certificate. COFEPRIS does not have enough people to respond on time.   

What has DRAGON done or do to support the development of the agrochemical industry in Mexico? Is it possible for the company to expand in the international market? 

The crop protection industry is in constant evolution. At DRAGON, we are committed to supporting farmers with better solutions, by having a team of technical specialists looking for safer alternatives in each product line, such as insecticides, fungicides and herbicides.

At present, we believe that in Mexico, we have a lot more opportunities to grow, but we do not deny the possibility of expanding our scopes beyond Mexican territory. Nowadays, we have a small presence in Central America.

What are your expectations for the future development of DRAGON? 

We want to be the number one Mexican company and be in the minds of our consumers. At DRAGON, we want to be at the forefront and be bold, by knowing their needs of and being close to our clients, and we are committed to doing this.

We have seen that there is an adjustment to consumers’ habits and what they expect for the future, so we are adapting our business portfolio to meet those market demands. With these modifications, we want to be part of the transformation of our industry, which is part of the food supply chain, by producing more and better food. In this way, we will continue to be the market leader.

(Editing by Erwin Xue and Christina Xie, AgroPages)

If you also want to tell your company story, or share your insights of the industry, please contact:

Christina Xie

christina@agropages.com

This article was initially published in AgroPages ‘Annual Review 2020’ magazine. Download it to read more articles.