Brazilian agri-retailer Adubos Real has a workforce of 220 and offers seeds, fertilisers, crop protection products to local farmers
Image: Marubeni’s office in Osaka, Japan. Photo: Courtesy of J o/Wikipedia.org
Marubeni has acquired Adubos Real, a Brazilian agri-input retailer, by investing nearly JPY7bn ($6.4m).
Adubos Real was established in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. With its 220 employees, the company has been contributing to local farmers for the last 39 years by offering seeds, fertilisers, crop protection products.
From now on, Marubeni will share its accumulated experience and knowledge with Adubos Real. Through the partnership, the Japanese company aims to support growers with solutions that they need for the advanced challenges they face, thus contributing to the growth and development of agriculture in Brazil.
At present, growers are expected to improve productivity, quality and safety of their agricultural products, in conjunction with population growth across the world, while at the same time preserving the environment is also important while working with limited farmland.
Marubeni aims to expand its agriculture business across North America, Europe and Asia
The Japanese firm stated that it is working withdeveloping and promoting agri-input businesses to address the social challenges associated with agriculture and will support sustainable agricultural production. It claims to be expanding its retail business globally, particularly in North America, the European Union and Asia.
In October this year, Marubeni partnered with MoBiol, an agristartup in Singapore that hasknowledge and ability to cultivate microalgae by digesting Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME), from which DHA and alternative proteins can be extracted.
The two companies will work on tackling two environmental issues. The first issue is that POME emits significant levels of methane gas, which takes place during the POME purification process.
The second issue is the aquaculture industry’s heavy dependence on fishmeal, which is the primary feed consumed by aqua-cultured fish. Fishmeal is a natural sea-fish powder which is rich in protein, DHA, and essential amino acids for fish.
According to research, edible sea-fish will soon be on the verge of extinction due to overfishing to meet the booming demand, especially in the ASEA region.
The two companies will soon begin their joint project in Indonesia, through which they will set up a demo-plant to confirm a proof of concept for MoBiol’stechnology, which will accelerate MoBiol’s environmentally-friendly PUME purification process.