Agricultural Cooperative ZEN-NOH, Mitsubishi Corp. to Form Agrichemical Joint Venture

The National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (ZEN-NOH) and Mitsubishi Corp. (MC) have announced the establishment of a new joint venture for the registration, manufacturing, and distribution of agrichemicals. The new company, “Z-MC Crop Protection Corporation” (tentative name) will be established in October of this year with ZEN-NOH and MC each holding a 50% share, and will begin operations in the 2018 fiscal year.

ZEN-NOH recognizes that lowering agrichemical costs requires seeking out demand and expanding its sales of agrochemical active ingredients in domestic non-crop markets as well as overseas, and accelerating the addition of generic (non-patent) agrichemicals to its range of product offerings. To this end, ZEN-NOH has been working to revamp its structure and corporate profile to better serve its agrichemical manufacturing, trading, and registration operations.

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For its part, as it seeks to expand its own business domains, MC has been taking steps to help meet the growing demand for food and agricultural inputs spurred by global population growth through its agrichemical contract manufacturing operations in India and China as well as through its domestic and international distribution businesses.

This joint venture is particularly unique as it combines the R&D and registration expertise of ZEN-NOH with MC’s manufacturing experience and global network, and builds a platform on which both companies can maximize their synergies.

The new company will facilitate the registration and manufacturing of ZEN-NOH’s active ingredients and other agrichemicals, expand sales of active ingredients and formulations abroad and in non-crop markets in Japan, and source generic agrichemicals that can contribute to better price competitiveness. The company is aiming to expand sales to 10 billion yen by 2021.

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By achieving economy of scale through the operations of the new company, ZEN-NOH and MC will jointly contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of Japanese agriculture.

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