President, could you introduce Isagro to us, highlighting its mission and values?

We are an Italian company of more than 600 employees engaged in research, development, production and distribution of agropharmaceuticals, i.e., products for agricultural crop protection.
We invest in innovation and development of new molecules with low environmental impact.
Established in 1993, we have been listed on the Italian Stock Exchange’s STAR segment since 2003.
We produce in 5 plants including 4 in Italy and 1 in India and sell to 80 countries.

We have always asked a question that all managers and entrepreneurs should seriously ask themselves, in every sector: what contribution does our business make to the well-being of people and the planet?

Let’s start with a very concrete scenario: when we are 9 billion in 2050 we will need more food than today; since we cannot increase the arable area by much, we have to make sure that the yield per hectare of agricultural areas increases, a goal, however, that necessarily has to be reconciled with ensuring the lowest possible environmental impact and maintaining the effectiveness of the pesticides used.

That’s our mission: to discover molecules to make effective products with less and less environmental impact.

In an industry like yours, where the R&D function is key to the business, how do you manage to be innovative?

Research investment for us accounts for as much as 10 percent of sales, and employees engaged in R&D are about 100 out of 600.
When we talk about R&D we at Isagro refer not to a general effort to improve products, etc., but to actual “discovery,” that is, the discovery of innovative new molecules.
We are among the very few companies in the world in this sector to do so, even in our small size, but we manage to be extremely competitive by leveraging “Italian creativity” applied to plant protection and health.

So can we talk about the value of Made in Italy in a globalized world even in a specific sector like agriculture?

Yes, we have developed a business model of which we are very proud: it is a pathway that from the discovery phase of active molecules for agricultural defense products takes us to the second phase of placing them on the market through alliances with international partners with whom we share the very high investments required in the development, registration and marketing phase of plant protection products.
Investments that we could not sustain alone, because we would risk “overspending” beyond financial capacity and at the same time “underinvesting” compared to needs.
For this reason, we have developed “mosaic” agreements that may involve co-ownership of development with some international companies, such as the one in 2012 with FMC Corporation: a collaboration agreement for the development of a new fungicide discovered by us that has a broad spectrum of action and potential for use worldwide.
Thanks to this partnership today we are well advanced in the development of the product that we expect to bring to market early in the next decade.