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December 21, 2015 Last week, the ag retail world gained a new member company. Existing members of Farmers Cooperative Co., Ames, IA, and West Central Cooperative (WCC), Ralston, IA, formally announced plans to merge their operations into a single entity. The new cooperative, to be called Landus Cooperative, will begin operation come April 1 with its headquarters in Ames.
Bringing together these two long-established Iowa cooperatives will create one of the largest ag retailers in the country. Separately, according to information from the 2015 CropLife 100 survey, the companies ranked numbers 18 and 72, respectively, in terms of revenues. If the combined cooperatives maintain their 2015 sales volumes, the newly formed Landus Cooperative will likely end up at No. 15 among 2016 CropLife 100 ag retailers.
“This merger showcases our members’ request for their cooperative to do more together for their operations than either business could do separately,” said WCC President/CEO Milan Kucerak in a statement. “We take our members’ confidence in a combined cooperative seriously as we prepare for integration and execution.”
Loading ...When the merger is complete, Landus Cooperative will be led by Kucerak. During the spring of 2015, I had the opportunity to interview him about WCC’s past, present, and future. At the time, as consolidations among cooperatives was beginning to ramp up, Kucerak told me that a lack of succession planning was the reason this was occurring. “Right now in agriculture, you have a slew of people who are at retirement age and don’t have a clear succession plan in place at their companies,” he said. “In these cases, a merger is a probably a good option.”
In a follow-up question, I asked Kucerak if WCC would join in this merger mania. “Perhaps, if the opportunity is there,” was his reply.
Apparently, not more than one year later, the opportunity Kucerak was looking for finally presented itself. And Landus Cooperative is the result.
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