Valent Introduces Biorational Business Unit

Valent U.S.A. has created a team focused on delivering effective biorational crop protection and crop enhancement products to Valent customers, calling the team the company’s biorational business unit.

Valent officials say the dedicated biorational group is designed to meet increasing customer demand and to take advantage of corporate synergies as part of the Region Americas group of parent company Sumitomo Chemical Company (SCC).

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“The creation of our biorational business unit represents a dramatic new approach to how Valent serves its customers,” says Jim Blome, Valent executive vice president and chief operating officer. “SCC and Valent are uniquely positioned in this industry with a focus on both biorational and traditional products for sustainable agriculture. This focus ultimately means a more complete portfolio of products and support to meet our customers’ individual needs–be they traditional, biorational or a combination of both.”

Valent is currently the exclusive marketer in North America of all crop protection and crop enhancement products of Valent BioSciences Corporation (VBC), a company within SCC and a global leader in biorational products.

According to Eric Tamichi, the new manager of the biorational business unit, Valent will continue to provide VBC products to current customers, but with an even stronger focus and increased collaboration with VBC on support and new technologies.

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“This new, focused business unit gives the Valent customer base access to VBC technology and technical support in a focused and streamlined way,” Tamichi says. “It’s great to be able to provide information and best practices to our customers based on VBC’s global footprint, and to best meet the needs of our customers.”

Valent will continue to market a number of VBC biorational products in the United States, including DiPel and XenTari biological insecticides, DiTera nematicide and ReTain, ProGibb, MaxCel, ProVide, Promalin, Release and RyzUp plant growth regulators, while planning for increased innovation and additional new products.

In addition to increased customer offerings and support, Blome says this reinforced focus on biorationals is a critical part of Valent’s growth path for the future.

“Sales of biorational products are projected to grow dramatically as retailer, food processor, consumer and grower demands for these types of products increase,” Blome says. “In fact, biopesticide growth is projected to increase from $594 million to $1.02 billion globally by 2015.”

The biorational business unit will be under Tamichi’s day-to-day direction. Tamichi was most recently the Canadian country manager of the company’s Valent Canada Crop and Professional Products operations, where he oversaw the launch of the overall business unit and several key products. He also has a 13-year history with Valent in a variety of research and business development leadership roles.

He will be joined in the Biorational Business Unit by biorational marketing and technical support people, working closely with VBC to manage current offerings and to bring future products to market. The team includes Steve Slaveck as market manager of biorationals and Tino Lopez and James Wargo as commercial development representatives. Rob Fritts of VBC will serve as a technical development specialist, a role responsible for ensuring technology collaboration between the two companies. The biorational group ultimately falls under the direction of Blome.

The new group also will work with existing Valent sales operations to provide biorational-specific information and assistance to Valent customers via their current sales representatives.

For more information about Valent, visit its website at Valent.com.

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