Lesaffre Eyes Global Growth and Increased U.S. Focus Since Acquisition

In early May, Agrauxine by Lesaffre announced it had acquired Ohio-based Advanced Biologicals Marketing (ABM.) 
Lesaffre has a 160+ year history and is a key global player in fermentation. Since 2014, Agrauxine has been the business unit of Lesaffre focused on biosolutions for crops production and has built sales in 35 countries.

Hugo Bony, CEO of Agrauxine by Lesaffre, says the ABM acquisition will help the company grow its presence in the U.S. 

“I’m convinced we will make a good venture about this,” Bony says. “We have good products–that are based on real science. And we have agility to think outside other constraints.”

A large part of Lesaffre’s legacy includes formulations and innovation around yeast, specifically how to dry the yeast to use it in formulations that can deliver high efficiencies. 

Bony says the focus of Agrauxine as a pure-play company solely focusing on agricultural biological products gives it an advantage. 

“It’s one of the ways ABM was such a good fit for us—they were also a pure play company,” Bony says. He also notes ABM was a distributor for Agrauxine products before the acquisition.

Bony says a goal is to cover all segments in the larger market of biological crop production products. 

“Agrauxine has been developing biofungicides and biostimultants, and ABM has some interesting projects and products they are in progress with, and we think those will come to the market in the next three years providing new bionematicides and bioinsecticides,” he says. 

While the company has its roots in the European market, Bony says they are eyes-wide-open in how the market for their products in the U.S. is different in terms of motivations and objectives. 

“We see the U.S. as an interesting market because of the approach is a pragmatic and yield oriented approach. The market is really capable of thinking of new ways to put together the biocontrol and biostimulant. Whereas in Europe, it’s been much more about replacing chemical products with bio-based solutions,” he says. 

While Agrauxine has had a larger footprint with specialty crops in the past, Bony says the row crop market is one where the company sees growth. 

Its No. 1 product in the U.S. today is Romeo, a biofungicide for vineyards and vegetables. 

“We see that our best sales come with the support of understanding the application timing and use of our products, and we can provide that technical support,” he says. 

Bony says they are already gaining acres for Smartfoil, a biostimulants that can be used in corn, soybeans, cotton, cereal grains, and many other crops. 

“With this product, we are seeing that drought stress or heat stress—even mid-day heat—causes the plant to shut down, especially crops sensitive from a yield perspective at flowering like soybeans. And Smartfoil will blind the plant from the stress and manage the plant to keep working normally. Under normal growing conditions, we have high consistency with thousands of trials showing a 7% yield increase in soybeans or cotton,” Bony says.