Land O’Lakes (LOL) has agreed to sell global technology and satellite imaging firm, Geosys to UrtheCast Corp. for $20 million.
Once the deal passes due diligence and confirmatory hurdles, the expected close date is November 6 of this year with a full completion of the transaction expected within 24 months.
Geosys was initially acquired by LOL in 2013 as a culmination of a multi-year relationship between the two parties through LOL’s WinField division. At the time the deal was viewed as solidifying LOL’s position as a leader in agribusiness and precision farming technology while offering Geosys a strategic partner to help drive accelerated growth.
A wholly-owned subsidiary of LOL, Geosys is the first global digital agriculture company founded by agronomists. Offering real-time, actionable insights to clients across the agriculture supply chain based on satellite and weather technology, the company is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has sales offices in North America, Europe, Australia, and Brazil. Services include risk management, agronomics, information technologies, remote sensing, input sales, and the monitoring of agricultural commodities.
Under the terms of the deal, Vancouver-based UrtheCast will have ownership of Geosys’ software that enables accessing, processing, cataloguing and retrieving of images, however, LOL will retain ownership of all IP connected to Geosys’ R7 Tool and farm-gate applications. Additionally, UrtheCast will continue to provide all of Geosys’ services to LOL but with an expanded utilization of data once the company’s UrtheDaily constellation is fully operational, according to a recent statement.
“At Land O’Lakes, we are constantly looking for the best ways to provide long-term support to our member-owners and our customers,” said Beth Ford, president and CEO of LOL. “This transaction will enhance our proprietary R7 Tool’s ability to identify the right places for farmers to make incremental in-season input investments to drive yields and profitability – in real time.”
A Solution Achieved
“Due to a lack of adapted imagery for agriculture, Geosys has been limited in its development and its ability to serve agricultural producers,” Damien Lepoutre, founder and president of Geosys told GAI News. In response, over the last 10 years the company has developed a virtual constellation of satellites to help make up for this limitation. At the same time, the company worked with a range of partners to develop an adapted satellite constellation and system to acquire and deliver cloud permitting, science- grade 5m images of the entire surface of the earth on a daily basis.
However, with UrtheCast’s UrtheDaily constellation, Geosys will be better positioned to build out a new range of unmatched services that entail a streamlined and optimized flow of information.
“The UrtheDaily constellation that will be launched by UrtheCast is the solution we have worked for and waited for,” said Lepoutre.
With UrtheCast Daily as a secured best image source, Geosys will also be better able to serve WinField United, and will establish itself in a leadership role in the worldwide agriculture market.
“Geosys will make crop monitoring a reality and will enable more sustainable agricultural decisions based on trustworthy real time information on each and every field and location in the world,” Lepoutre told GAI News. “This change is the result of 30 years of learning on what is best for agriculture and we are very excited to lead this new change for the benefit of farmers and our agribusiness partners in the world.”
For UrtheCast, the integration of Geosys will bring together capabilities that will position the company as a leader in its category.
“This important acquisition would bring together the best-in-class imagery capabilities of UrtheCast with the proven geoanalytics power and deep agribusiness industry relationships of Geosys,” said Donald Osborne, CEO of UrtheCast. “By unifying these companies, UrtheCast will be well positioned as the leader in fully integrated geoanalytics solutions for the agribusiness industry.”
-Lynda Kiernan