Arvesta Corporation is doing things differently than many other farm chemical companies.
It has no plans to spend a lot of money or time developing new compounds. It doesn’t plan to erect a lot of buildings or send staff to visit farmyards with new half-tons.
Rather, the company hopes to build its business by sticking to basics – selling chemicals to farmers across Western Canada and the United States.
In October, Arvesta bought the three-year-old wheat herbicide Everest (flucarbazoneÐsodium) from Bayer Inc. Bayer was forced under competition rules to sell its North American rights to the product after merging with Aventis.
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Arvesta was formed from a 2001 merger of the “life sciences divisions” of publicly traded Japanese companies Tomen and Nichimen and is partially held by Toyota.
Hugh McGillivary of Arvesta said the company will distribute Everest through existing farm product retailers, rather than establishing a separate sales force.
He said Arvesta will contract chemical producers to manufacture its products. It will not develop new products, but will acquire existing licences from other companies.
“We’ll keep the assets to a minimum, we’ll concentrate on customer service, agronomy advice on our products, marketing … finding products that aren’t being registered in Canada or the U.S., doing the registrations, making them available to farmers,” he said.
McGillivary said Arvesta will try to fill a niche.
“There are older products that the big guys aren’t interested in representing any more, but are still useful to numbers of producers. There are new products that don’t meet the registration cost hurdle that is set pretty high by bigger companies. We can make some of those pay for us.”
Arvesta plans to keep its sights on cereal products for now.
Everest is a selective, post-emergent herbicide that controls wild oats and green foxtail in wheat and durum. It has a unique mode of action that controls wild oats resistant to groups one, three and 25 herbicides.
Plants absorb the herbicide through the leaf and the root so it has a residual effect.
“Everest tank mixes pretty well with a lot of products and it makes sense that we’d be involved in putting some packaged products together,” said McGillivary.
Arvesta also owns Select herbicide, registered for grassy weed control in soybeans, canola, flax, sunflowers and sugar beets.
Arvesta employs about 25 people in the cereal business, with 11 in Western Canada, and expects to open a Calgary office this year.
