Israel Chemicals (TASE: ICL: NYSE: ICL) announced today that it has acquired US-based data-driven farming and precision agriculture company Growers Holdings Inc. The acquisition is part of Israel Chemicals strategy of enhancing its digital services. No financial details were disclosed but market sources estimate that the acquisition was for $25-30 million.
Growers' agronomic services platform enhances decision-making capabilities for farmers, agronomists and other agro-professionals by creating easily adaptable and executable data-driven recommendations. The company's platform collects and structures manual and machine-generated farm data, instantly creating agile and return-focused plans for planting, fertilization and purchasing decisions that are streamed to farm machinery for effortless on-field application. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Growers employs a team of data scientists, engineers, developers and agronomists, serving a rapidly growing customer base across the US.
Israel Chemicals president and CEO Raviv Zoller said, "The acquisition of Growers expands and strengthens our offering of agro-digital services and our capability to develop innovative solutions to generate higher agricultural yields and more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices. By combining Growers' one-of-a-kind platform with ICL's extensive agronomic know-how, we are accelerating our market reach and development roadmap to create an unparalleled digital service offering focused on providing agro-professionals with unique access to currently untapped and unstructured data in a simple, fast and actionable way."
Growers founder and CEO Steven Valencsin said, "Agriculture is an industry that impacts every person on the planet. Our belief is that there is significant opportunity to drive a more sustainable, profitable future through the better utilization of agriculture data."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 19, 2020
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