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In the mid-90s, a productive revolution for agriculture came to Argentina with direct sowing. Agricultural producers modified their way of planting and with it a new offer of products began to be true allies of efficiency.

Along this path, Agrofina re-boosted the production of its work lines in synthesis and formulations and took a real leap forward. The enormous production plant that the company with 45 years of experience in the Argentine agribusiness has in the Zárate Industrial Park, in Buenos Aires, accounts for this.

In the first days of January 2024, an Infocampo team walked through its facilities and learned how they work in a company that stands out for the production of solutions for the agricultural sector.

From Monday to Saturday, in work shifts that begin early in the morning and end late at night, Agrofina is on the move hand in hand with more than almost 140 employees who come to its Zarateña plant daily. There are about 87 plant operators and the rest are researchers and laboratory analysts, plus driving position personnel.

“The path begins in 1978, with a small laboratory, a “spin-off” of another company where basically what was intended was to sell technology services. The development of phytosanitary products was a laboratory that did not have an industrial plant. Almost two decades later, in 1997, the plant was installed in this place with a much smaller capacity than the current one, approximately one tenth,” said Héctor Di Loreto, manager of the Agrofina Development Laboratory.

From there things took another speed. The temporal coincidence with the arrival of direct sowing was correctly read by the company, on which the eyes of the Los Grobo Group rested, a great enhancer of its current development.

“However, that same genetics continued over time with an industrial plant that allowed us to develop our own products that we previously made in third-party plants. “Now we have a great multidisciplinary team,” said Di Loreto.

Fernando Lapis is the Plant Manager, and commands the logistics of a multiplicity of factors that generate the daily production of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, phytoregulators and adjuvants. In 2004 he joined the company and over time he developed alongside the growth of Agrofina.

“We have evolved a lot. Originally this plant synthesized all the molecules that it then formulated and packaged, while today the focus is on synthesizing a significant amount of molecules, and there are other products that we formulate from imported active ingredients,” Lapis explained.

Today the options are to produce what reaches the producer, or also the generation of active ingredients that are then processed in other plants. However, the main concept, they say, is given by the windows that it opens, being a “multi-product” plant.

When it comes to comparison with the quality and production standards that exist abroad, Agrofina feels calm. Exportation is not a mecca to which they seek to go in these times, mainly because of how challenging it is to supply Argentine producers.

“This is achieved with the same standards that any foreign plant has, such as safety, quality and processing. Or also the productivity ratio. Because there are almost no plants that synthesize several products like this one today,” said Lapis.

HAND IN HAND WITH THE PRODUCER

The other facet of the company is the closeness it develops with agricultural producers. And the person who carries the threads of that relationship and receives first-hand the returns from the Argentine primary sector is Lisandro Guerrieri, the Technical Development Manager.

Guerrieri maintained that "one of the characteristics that Agrofina has is having products of very good quality, but also for the fact of being next to the producer at the time he tries these products."

“And we are also constantly inviting them to what are research and development field trials. Our entire portfolio is tested in the field and we are always looking for maximum effectiveness,” he pointed out.

Therefore, in the context of the transition from drought to the numbers and probabilities that the El Niño phenomenon brings, efficiency and cost control will be one of the keys for producers.

Therefore, along those lines, Fernando Lapis graphed the confidence with which they began the new year. “Agrofina comes with a very strong line of expanding and partnering in a committed way with clients, providing them with solutions and accompanying them.”

“With the climate that has changed in relation to 2023 and with what we have been doing, the prospects are much better than what we had last year,” concluded Lapis. → infocampo.com.ar

Automatic translation from spanish.