Chore Time Brocks (CTB) acquires Agro Logic.
Is that news? Yes indeed, and it is more than just "American multinational buys
a majority share of a small Israeli
enterprise".
Chore Time Brock
(CTB) acquires Agro Logic
. Is that news? Yes
indeed, and it is more than just "American multinational buys a majority share
of a small Israeli enterprise".
 |
Both companies are known in the poultry industry: the first as a
provider of all kinds of housing and feed storage systems for the
livestock industry, and the second as a manufacturer of electronic systems
for weighing birds and climate control. |
The first response to this news item was: why in heaven
would
CTB
buy this company - knowing that it already owns three companies/brands
that cover the same area?
Before drawing a conclusion, I asked a few
insiders about the meaning of this acquisition. This quickly told me that CTB
wants to operate globally in different market segments, with the domestic USA
operation possibly following a different strategy from the worldwide approach.
Agro Logic excellently fulfils the need to serve a large segment of the
emerging markets, where there is a need for simple and reliable technology at an
affordable price.
This perfectly characterises the issue most advanced
US and EU companies struggle with. They have grown with their home market by
supplying high tech systems. That is, systems that require well-educated staff
to operate them; systems that can provide the information modern farm management
demands.
By developing those systems, companies of that scale tend to
concentrate on modern producers, losing contact with the less advanced producers
in their own country as well as overseas. We have often seen that some companies
recognise this in time to develop a strategy for those clients or, as CTB has
done, to acquire a small company that fills that gap.
Unique in this acquisition is that
Agro Logic fits well in the CTB club, but simultaneously ads a new element to
the know-how base of the CTB electronics family; the knowledge of GMS and GPRS
in data transfer. Fancom, CTB's top segment provider of electronic control
systems, announced that it is going to make a major step in becoming a provider
of management information technology for the intensive livestock industry. This
requires the use of new technology, especially in transferring large amounts of
data over a long distance. And that is a field of interest where Agro Logic
could be of help, which means that this acquisition serves both ends of CTB's
electronics group. An interesting development isn't it? But will this insight
lead more companies to follow CTB's strategy? This could well be the
case.
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