M&As in 2024 Biological Industry: Empowering Industry Upgrading and Reshaping

Date:03-07-2025

Editor’s note: Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the agricultural biological industry in 2024 were exciting, revealing diverse and distinct trends. These M&As not only profoundly impact the involved companies but also bring about strong momentum for the development of the whole industry. Through technological innovation, market expansion, resource integration, and sustainable development, agricultural biological is moving towards a more efficient, environment-friendly, and innovative direction of growth. 

With the industry's continuous development, M&As are expected to continue to be an essential driver of enterprises’ strategic development and promotion of industry transformation, which will create more opportunities for the sustainable development of global agriculture. This article analyzes the typical M&A cases in 2024 to explore their highlights, their positive role in promoting growth, and the future trends of agricultural biological.

M&A highlights: Multi-dimensional perspectives, such as technological innovation, market expansion, industry chain synergy, and strategic layout

• Technological innovation and resource integration: Key driver to industry upgrading 

Technological innovation and resource integration became key drivers for mergers and acquisitions in the agricultural biological market in 2024. For example, the agricultural humic solutions leader, Huma^®, Inc., acquired the granular fertilizer company Gro-Power, Inc. The acquisition not only led to the integration of granular fertilizer and soil conditioner products but also resulted in an increase in soil fertility and crop health via the Micro Carbon Technology^®. Similarly, Lesaffre, a key global player in the field of fermentation and microorganisms, acquired Altar, a French start-up specializing in Adaptive Laboratory Evolution (ALE), boosting Lesaffre’s capacity for innovation in fermentation and microorganisms.

Certis Biologicals acquired multiple assets from AgBiome, including consequential and market-tested fungicides Howler^® and Theia^®. The acquisition is not only a complementation to the product portfolio of Certis Biologicals to expand the provision of total solutions to greenhouse, specialty, and large-acreage crops but is also an enhancement of the company’s innovation capability for agriculture. Furthermore, Ginkgo Bioworks acquired AgBiome’s platform assets, including over 115,000 fully sequenced and isolated strains and over 500 million unique gene sequences. These assets further expanded Ginkgo’s innovation capability in the development of agricultural biotechnology, which not only accelerates the process of new product development but also provides a rich resource for the development of AI models for biological R&D. 

These M&A cases indicate that through M&As, enterprises can quickly acquire key technologies and speed up technological innovation to provide customers with more efficient and environment-friendly total solutions.

• Market expansion and regional layout: Speeding up global market penetration

Market expansion and regional layout became important means for enterprises to enhance core competence. Israel Chemical (ICL) acquired Nitro 1000, a Brazilian biological manufacturer, developer, and provider. The acquisition further strengthened ICL’s market position in South America and reinforced its market presence in Brazil, as supported by the Nitro 1000 product portfolio. Andermatt Group, a biocontrol company, accelerated its global market expansion and regional presence through a series of strategic acquisitions, having successively acquired BioTEPP in Canada, 80% stakes in the Argentinian biocontrol and agrotechnology provider Agricheck Srl and Entocare C.V., a Dutch natural enemy beneficial insect company, so as to accelerate the global market expansion. These acquisitions consolidated Andermatt’s leading position in biological crop protection and expanded its biocontrol technologies and services. Andermatt stresses that building a complementary product system covering the entire life cycle of pests and diseases will help growers achieve sustainable, high-standard control and high return on investment. 

The French Eléphant Vert acquired all shares of BIO3G, demonstrating its strategy to accelerate global market penetration. With this acquisition, Eléphant Vert could utilize its essential market in Africa and BIO3G’s network in Europe to complement its product portfolio and geographic region, thus further expanding its market influence in the biological market of Europe and Africa.

Moreover, Indian PI Industries acquired Plant Health Care (PHC), a novel hairpin-derived peptide high-tech enterprise, to accelerate global market expansion. The acquisition enables PI Industries to combine PHC’s core expertise in plant immune induction to promote the integrated development of biologicals and innovative chemicals while providing PHC with broader distribution channels and approaches to business expansion. 

• Industry chain integration and synergy: Enhancing comprehensive service capability

The integration and synergy of the industry chain became a key factor in the promotion of corporate development. MustGrow Biological acquired NexusBioAg, a Canadian biological supplier. Upon completion of the acquisition, MustGrow will become a fully integrated provider of biological and regenerative agriculture solutions with a sales, marketing, and distribution division in Canada. The NexusBioAg sales and marketing team would bring extensive experience in the biological and regenerative agriculture sector to facilitate the marketing of MustGrows products and third parties while reducing the cost of distribution, which enables the achievement of a synergistic effect.  

Nutrien Ag Solutions acquired Suncor Energy’s biocontrol technology, which not only enriches its product portfolio but also enhances, via technical collaboration, its competitiveness and service capability in the biocontrol sector.  

Furthermore, Sustainable Agro Solutions acquired Pevesa Agroscience, a plant-based biostimulant and fertilizer producer, to achieve vertical integration of a strategic raw material (natural plant-derived amino acids), further enhancing its competitiveness in the biostimulant sector. These cases revealed the importance of mergers and acquisitions to allow enterprises to consolidate the upstream and downstream industry chain, which optimizes resource allocation and improves operational efficiency to provide customers with more comprehensive solutions.

• Corporate strategy and long-term development: Paving the way for future growth

Corporate strategy and long-term development became important considerations in mergers and acquisitions. Ginkgo Bioworks’ acquisition of AgBiome’s platform assets not only gave it access to a wealth of strain and gene sequence resources but also significantly enhanced its competitiveness in agricultural biotechnology via the integration of its R&D capabilities. PI Industries acquired PHC to further improve its business presence in the biopesticide sector via the integration of PHC’s peptide technology. 

These cases demonstrate that M&A is not only an enterprise’s short-term strategy but also an important measure to lay the foundation for long-term future development. By integrating resources and technologies, enterprises are better positioned to respond to future market challenges and achieve sustainable growth.

Impact of M&As: Injecting new vigor into the biological industry and starting up a new engine of development

 

M&A has a positive impact on the agriculture biological industry in many ways. First, by integrating technical resources and increasing R&D spending, enterprises can accelerate technological innovation and new product development, improving the industry's overall technical level. For instance, Ginkgo Bioworks’ acquisition of AgBiome's assets could provide abundant data and strains for AI model development, which is expected to achieve major technical breakthroughs. 

Secondly, mergers and acquisitions can optimize the market structure and resource allocation, helping enterprises achieve scale expansion, eliminate outdated production capacity, and regulate market operation in a more orderly manner while improving the efficiency of resource utilization and promoting the healthy development of the industry. In addition, many M&A cases focused on the development of environment-friendly and sustainable agricultural biological, which facilitate the green transformation of agricultural production to meet consumer demand for healthy food and the requirement of protection of the ecological environment.

Lastly, through the integration of technology, markets, and resources, enterprises are continuously improving their comprehensive strength, optimizing products and services, and strengthening brand development. Thus, production efficiency, product quality, and service within the entire industry are improving, which helps enhance global competitiveness.

M&A trending: Reshaping industry future via technological innovation, diversified layout, and sustainable development

From the M&A cases at present, it is not difficult to find that most companies have been accelerating development and transformation via various strategic initiatives. On the one hand, enterprises can achieve diversification of product portfolio and expansion of the market through mergers and acquisitions, which are brought into new markets or new market segments using the competitive market channel and customer resources of the acquired company. Meanwhile, on the other hand, technology-driven innovation becomes a new driver to future development, where enterprises consolidate technical resources to accelerate research and development of new products so as to promote technological innovation and technical breakthroughs within the industry.

The idea of sustainable development prevails over the whole process of mergers and acquisitions when enterprises follow the global trend of sustainable agriculture, develop environment-friendly biologicals, and reduce the use of chemical pesticides to contribute to the achievement of ecological balance and soil health. Besides, there is a noticeable trend of integration of the industry chain, where enterprises are optimizing the production processes through vertical integration, cost reduction, and improvement of supply stability to enhance their voice and competitiveness in the industry chain.

These M&A trends have not only promoted the development of an enterprise itself but have also enhanced the competitiveness and sustainable development capacity of the entire industry, paving the way for reshaping the market structure in the future.

This article will be published in the magazine of 2024 Annual Review. Follow this magazine to read more articles/stories.

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