Telus Explains Proagrica Acquisition, The Future of Digital Ag Platforms

The news first broke in late November when Proagrica employees were told of the company being acquired by Telus Agriculture & Consumer Goods. The deal was officially closed on February 29. 

And as Chris Terris, VP and Global Head, Animal Agriculture & M&A Growth at Telus Agriculture & Consumer Goods, explains, this acquisition’s complexity led to how the integration unfolded. 

“We spent time between signing and close to make sure the continuity in the business was a focus—employees got paid, procurement was operational, contracts were managed,” Terris says. 

“We’ve gone through the simple hygiene of the carve out from Relx, and now in the past month, we’ve started to meet with the Proagrica legacy teams face-to-face to talk about how Telus views the industry and our willingness to commit and invest in the long-term,” he adds. 

Terris acknowledges while the Telus team was focused on the integration, some rumbling in the industry questioned the strategy behind the business deal.

“The notion that this wasn’t strategic is a misconception. With respect to product fit, customer fit, and geographic expansion, we had looked at Proagrica as a potential target for quite awhile because it is a good strategic fit.” 

Telus Agriculture was founded in 2018. The division of the Canada-based, global communications technology company grew via a series of 12 acquisitions. One of those, Conservis, has since been divested. 
“We are a number of years into our journey, and we’ve spent a good amount of time integrating the assets we have,” Terris says.

The common platform Telus Agriculture is building is Telus Agronomy. 

“We want to be a vendor of consequence and a vendor of choice. Driven by customers and the needs they have, the goal is provide a platform so they don’t have to buy one solution here and one solution there,” Terris says. 

He highlights three aspects of the Proagrica acquisition that will help build Telus Agronomy with that vision. 

“On the agronomy side, Proagrica has three things complimentary for us: Farmplan, Sirrus, and CDMS, which is a nice combination with what we have with Agrian on compliance,” Terris says. 

Terris sees Telus Agriculture as having a competitive advantage with its technological capabilities, data, and insights from the data to help customers improve profitability and productivity. He says some of the benefits for the agricultural division’s customers will come from synergies in the Telus network. 

“You will see us leverage more of our technology on the telecommunications side of the business. We’re software heavy now, but that will evolve,” he says. “We’re also working across the Telus family to bring artificial intelligence into our technology. So for example, in animal agriculture, at feedlots using AI to help with post-mortem diagnosis. This is similar to the radiological examples and how AI is assisting in human health.” 

When asked about milestones so far for the Telus Agriculture division, Terris mentions three. 

“Launching publicly after we had done acquisitions quietly was an important one for us. Then we went through a major rebrand when we added consumer goods. And over the past year we’ve started to retire legacy brands that were acquired and moved to a common naming structure,” he says. 

And he doesn’t rule out further acquisitions, but points to full integration as the next milestone. 

“We’re continuing to be inquisitive of acquisitions,” Terris says. “We are building the business in a strategic fashion with assets, technology and people to compliment that. We will continue to invest in this industry with capital investments in our technology and our platform.” 

In the next year, he points to two goals: full integration of the product platforms with a  cohesive set of customer solutions and greater awareness in the industry that Telus Agriculture is investing in this industry for the long-term.