Crystal Crop acquires 3 insecticide brands from Corteva Agriscience

New Delhi, Jan 6 () Agro-chemical firm Crystal Crop Protection Ltd on Monday said it has acquired three insecticide brands from US-based Corteva Agriscience, which will help the company to generate an additional revenue of about Rs 50 crore annually.

The company has seven manufacturing plants in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana. It posted a net profit of about Rs 130 crore over a turnover of around Rs 1,400 crore during the last financial year.

"We have acquired three premium insecticides brands Dursban, Nurelle-D and Predator brands in India from Corteva Agriscience," Crystal Crop MD Ankur Aggarwal told .

This is Crystal's fifth acquisition in last two years and is part of the company's strategy to diversify product portfolio and widen its market presence, he added.

"This acquisition is a part of Crystal's strategy to add value to its business and ensure growth for all its stakeholders. We believe such strategic acquisitions would improve our competitiveness, further help in diversifying our product portfolio and thus strengthen our market presence across India," Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal said these three brands would give Rs 40-50 crore revenue annually.

Corteva Agriscience is a major American agricultural chemical and seed company. Originally an agricultural unit of DowDuPont, it later became one of the major stand alone agricultural organizations in the world.

While Dursban is a specialty insecticide that offers control of more than 280 pests, Predator is broad-spectrum insecticide for control of pests of cotton and rice.

Nurrelle D offers pest protection to mainly potato, tomato, apple, peach and plum plants.

In 2018, Crystal acquired a specialty chemicals manufacturing facility at Nagpur from Cytec India.

After that it acquired Indian grain sorghum, pearl millet and fodder sorghum seeds business from Syngenta India, followed by the acquisition of four brands namely Furadan, Splendour, Affinity Force and Metcil from FMC India Limited.

Crystal also bought three brands from Syngenta, namely Tilt, Proclaim and Blue Copper.

In 2016, it had signed an agreement with Germany's BASF SE to acquire the brand Bavistin for use in India.

Crystal Crop Protection had acquired Hyderabad based company Rohini-Seeds and Rohini Bioseeds and Agritech in 2011. MJH BAL