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Agriculture Roundup for Friday April 29, 2022

Apr 29, 2022 | 9:42 AM

MELFORT, Sask. — Linamar Corporation has announced it will expand its agriculture portfolio with the acquisition of Salford Group.

Linamar will pay roughly $260 million for the Ontario-based crop nutrition application and tillage products company.

Linamar President and COO Jim Jarrell said agriculture and food is a key element of the company’s strategic roadmap, which was first outlined following the purchase of MacDon in 2018.

“Through MacDon, we already have an established market-leading position in the harvesting segment. Tillage and crop nutrition are a natural complement to that product portfolio which will allow us to accelerate sales of all products,” Jarrell said. “Combining Linamar’s scaled resources and global reach with Salford’s leading reputation will drive value creation for all stakeholders.”

Salford Group was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Salford, Ont. It has three manufacturing locations in Canada and two in the United States. The Salford product lineup includes both pneumatic and spinner type fertilizer spreaders, cover crop seeders, and a range of tillage equipment.

The purchase is expected to close during the second quarter of 2022.

BASF is launching a new platform to inspire new digital solutions for agriculture.

AgroStart began in Latin America where BASF cooperated with 14 start-ups.

BASF Agricultural Solutions division president Vincent Gros said AgroStart pairs ideas with mentorship, market access, and capital.

“With the global launch of our open innovation platform, AgroStart, we combine the world’s most promising ideas with our expertise, direct access to our global customer base and markets, mentoring, as well as capital to cultivate the future of digital agriculture together,” Gros said.

AgroStart’s North American roll-out will initially focus on identifying solutions to help farmers to manage and extract value from the large amount of data they create on the farm.

Over the past few years, multiple technologies have been developed including drone-assisted application of crop protection products or weather forecasting.

alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

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