Everyone loves a good Top 10 list. In fact, some prominent celebrities such as David Letterman spent much of their careers cataloguing various Top 10 lists.
In the crop protection company arena, the Top 10 list has been in a bit of a flux lately. Several of the so-called Big Six players have been actively merging their businesses, which has created an entirely new Top 10 ranking – or at least, a new one once 2018 rolls around.
At the recent AgriBusiness Global Trade Summit in Las Vegas, NV, Jim DeLisi, Owner of Fanwood Chemical, presented a paper detailing how the new Top 10 Crop Protection Companies for the world will shake out once the dust settles from the current round of mega mergers. The clear No. 1 in this new world will be the combined Bayer/Monsanto, with just over $27 billion in annual sales. Virtually tied for second place will be Syngenta/ChemChina ($17.4 billion) and Dow/DuPont ($17.2 billion).
The rest of the top five will consist of BASF at No. 4 and FMC Corp. at No. 5, by virtue of its acquisition of much of DuPont crop protection products/research.
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As for the rest of the Top 10, this is likely to include the following players, in no particular order: Australia’s Nufarm, India’s United Phosphorous Ltd., Japan’s Sumitomo Agrochemicals, and two U.S. companies – AMVAC and Albaugh.
A possible sixth member of this group, added DeLisi, would be the Platform Ag from the U.S., which is the merger of Chemtura, Arysta, and Agriphar. However, industry rumors indicate that Platform Ag could end up in a merger with one of the other “next five” companies in the coming months.
So the merger mania currently gripping the crop protection marketplace might continue for at least a little while longer . . .
