Agriculture Industry > Unia Group Ploughing back into the polish agricultural business U nia Group is a renowned Poland- based provider of agricultural machinery produced by Unia Grudziądz, Kraj Kutno, Agromet Brzeg, Pilmet Brzeg and Famarol Słupsk. It uses one of the most revolutionary and impactful applications of modern technology. The truly elemental hu- man need for food has often driven the development of technology and ma- chines. Over the last decades, advances in farm equipment have transformed the way people are employed and pro- duce their food worldwide. The fast development, high quality of machines and customer confidence earned the company a good reputation as a reli- able business partner. At present, it is prepared to face new challenges and respond to the demands created by the growing agricultural market. History paved with takeovers The origins of the business trace back to the mid-1990s when Andrzej Guzowski, the present managing director and co-owner, set up the private lim- ited liability company Unia Grudziądz in December 1995. Initially, the enterprise leased and soon after took over the as- sets of Unia Ventzki, a company which was established in 1882. After the World War II Unia Ventzki was nationalised and, following the period of transformation of Polish business entities at the begin- ning of the 1990s, it declared bankrupt- cy, which allowed for restructuring of the enterprise. First and foremost, Unia Grudziądz is the provider of agricultural machinery which is used in the process of soil cultivation. Since the company’s business activities were closely linked to sowing, it bought its way into Kraj (Rol- masz), the leading Polish producer of seeders, thus becoming its shareholder in 2002. This event marked the begin- ning of takeover bids undertaken by Unia Grudziądz on the Polish market. It was not long until the firm took over Agromet Brzeg, a manufacturer of fer- tilizers, in 2004. Two years later two other companies found itself under Unia Grudziądz’s control: Pilmet, the market leader in the production of sprayers, and Famarol, the producer of hay and silage machinery. In the meantime, the company started the manufacture of potato planters and harvesters based on the licences purchased from a Strzelce Opolskie company which was on the verge of bankruptcy. What is more, the enterprise developed and implemented its own technology for the production of manure spreaders which was sub- sequently launched in Brzeg. In recent years the company turned over a new leaf by bringing together five produc- ers of agricultural machinery ranging from ploughs, seeders, through spread- ers, fertilizers to silage technology. Then, having bought the licence for the pro- duction of round balers from DF, the business implemented research and develop-
Transcript
Agriculture Industry > Unia Group
Ploughing back into the polish agricultural business
Unia Group is a renowned Poland-based provider of agricultural machinery produced by Unia
Grudziądz, Kraj Kutno, Agromet Brzeg, Pilmet Brzeg and Famarol Słupsk. It uses one of the most revolutionary and impactful applications of modern technology. The truly elemental hu-man need for food has often driven the development of technology and ma-chines. Over the last decades, advances in farm equipment have transformed the way people are employed and pro-duce their food worldwide. The fast development, high quality of machines and customer confidence earned the company a good reputation as a reli-able business partner. At present, it is prepared to face new challenges and respond to the demands created by the growing agricultural market.
History paved with takeoversThe origins of the business trace back to the mid-1990s when Andrzej Guzowski, the present managing director
and co-owner, set up the private lim-ited liability company Unia Grudziądz in December 1995. Initially, the enterprise leased and soon after took over the as-sets of Unia Ventzki, a company which was established in 1882. After the World War II Unia Ventzki was nationalised and, following the period of transformation of Polish business entities at the begin-ning of the 1990s, it declared bankrupt-cy, which allowed for restructuring of the enterprise. First and foremost, Unia Grudziądz is the provider of agricultural machinery which is used in the process of soil cultivation. Since the company’s business activities were closely linked to sowing, it bought its way into Kraj (Rol-masz), the leading Polish producer of seeders, thus becoming its shareholder in 2002. This event marked the begin-ning of takeover bids undertaken by Unia Grudziądz on the Polish market. It was not long until the firm took over Agromet Brzeg, a manufacturer of fer-tilizers, in 2004. Two years later two
other companies found itself under Unia Grudziądz’s control: Pilmet, the market leader in the production of sprayers, and Famarol, the producer of hay and silage machinery. In the meantime, the company started the manufacture of potato planters and harvesters based on the licences purchased from a Strzelce Opolskie company which was on the verge of bankruptcy. What is more, the enterprise developed and implemented its own technology for the production of manure spreaders which was sub-sequently launched in Brzeg. In recent years the company turned over a new leaf by bringing together five produc-ers of agricultural machinery ranging from ploughs, seeders, through spread-ers, fertilizers to silage technology. Then, having bought the licence for the pro-duction of round balers from DF, the business implemented research and develop-
ment practices with a view to provid-ing a better customer-oriented serv-ice. At the moment the production is handled by four companies located in Grudziądz, Słupsk, Kutno and Brzeg. In each of them the enterprise holds be-tween 90 and 100 percent of the shares.
Plough money into the Polish marketSince its accession to the EU, Poland has been emerging as the biggest European agricultural market and one of the big-gest worldwide. It is also extremely diver-sified, as it consists of both big farms and thousands of small farmsteads whose practices need to be revamped. Accord-ing to Unia Group’s managing director, such a situation creates very favour-able conditions for investments. What is more, nowadays the Polish market needs investors more than ever, which also adds luster to the present market conditions. The question that needs to be addressed is therefore how to invest rather than whether invest or not. The is-sue received a lot of attention from vari-ous restructuring programmes support-ed by the EU and funds coming from the Polish state budget. As Mr Guzowski claims, thanks to those programmes as many as 40-50 thousand machines with tractors can be sold annually. There are, however, several essential issues which have a great influence on farmers’ deci-sion making process related to invest-ments. The first is raising awareness of the possibility and advantages of being in a possession of a tractor which has 20-
30 H P m o r e than the c u r r e n t l y owned. The second aspect concerns the need for invest-ment in new tech-nologies which Mr Guzowski compares to “replacing the kinescope TV with the flat screen where the new flat screen is of high technology, more effi-cient and better equipped.” Farmers are entitled to use extra state funds which they usually allocate for high quality ma-chines and equipment. Last year’s fluc-tuations of the Polish currency and its recent depreciation against the euro are unquestionably to the detriment of an investment-oriented atmosphere. Apart from the technical problems created by a volatile market and experienced by producers and customers, potential cus-tomers are in two minds about such in-vestments. Mr Guzowski, however, takes a firm stand, saying “I do not agree with the statement that a strong zloty at-tracts producers from the euro zone and a weak zloty is beneficial to the domestic producers. The exchange rate is favoura-ble for all of the participants only when it is stable! Only then earnings and spend-ing of farmers and manufacturers can be calculated using comparable measures.” In other words, a predictable environ-ment is a prerequisite for success.
Current tendenciesIn the forthcoming years Poland is not going to become the country of non-till farming, according to Mr Guzowski. Plough will remain the main tool for conventional tillage, yet convertible ploughs are expected to gain ground. It is predicted that sales of convertible ploughs and mounted bed ploughs will be similar in the near future. Given the enormous popularity of 90-100 HP trac-tor, 3-4 bodies ploughs are expected to become the most marketable products. Since the cultivation presupposes sow-ing, Polish farmers are rather inclined to buy sowing and cultivation units in lieu of buying two machines separately. Pneumatic seeders will become popu-lar, although they are unlikely to hit the jackpot, so mechanical seeders will maintain its position. “As far as punctual sowers are concerned, this process can go in a different way due to very low prices of corn. Big farms will be looking for solutions to avoid ploughing and this
is why, in my opinion, heavy mechanical seeders will
be a better choice than pneumatic
Agriculture Industry > Unia Group
ones. Time will show if I am right,” says Mr Guzowski. The development of cur-rent technologies and the purchase of new, well-equipped machines will mini-mize the effort and improve the quality of farmers’ work. In the last five years spreaders for mineral fertilizers have become extremely popular. The farmers replaced single-disc spreaders with two-disc ones which came with relatively ba-sic equipment. Many of these machines were brand new, therefore this sector of the market will develop at a slower rate than it used to. However, as Mr Guzowski predicts, the next stage will involve the purchase of two-disc spreaders with electronic controllers and multifunc-tional spreaders of high volume (5000 and 10000) and high ground clearance which enable to spread lime, mineral fertilizers during the whole process of vegetation. They are also equipped with electronic controllers and GPS analysis systems. In general, the process of ferti-lizing using organic fertilizers has better prospects than that relying on the use of mineral fertilizers. On the one hand, the market of mineral fertilizers is underde-veloped. On the other hand, the costs of using mineral fertilizers are much higher than those of using organic ones. And finally, the growing importance of green issues and the evolution of cultivation methods indicate that increase in sales of big machinery should be anticipated.
Business offerDuring fifteen years of its activity, the company has brought many machines to the Polish market. Since they are designed for different purposes, the machinery is available under several categories: cultivation (i.e. mounted cul-tivators, mounted reversible ploughs, compact disc cultivators, semi-mount-ed reversible ploughs, stubble cultiva-tors, subsoilers, heavy disc cultivators, semi-mounted seedbed combination, disc harrows), cultivation and seeding
(i.e. tractor-mounted ce-real drill, compact disc cultivators, seeding units, cultivating drill machines, harrows, pneumatic drill for sowing corn (mulch sowing), ferti-lizer drill, tractor-mounted cereal drill, seeders for sowing beets (corn), veg-etable planters, aftercrop seeders, semi-mounted sowing and cultivation units (disc), mounted sowing and cultivation units (disc or active), seedbed combina-tions), hay / silage making (i.e. mowers, shredders, balers, rakes, wrappers, har-vesters, loaders), fertilization (i.e. fertiliz-ers and lime spreaders, spreaders), pro-tection (i.e. field crop sprayers, barrow sprayers, orchard sprayers), potatoes (i.e. potato planters, potato and vegetable diggers, potato and vegetable diggers and harvesters) and other (e.g. trailed salt and sand spreaders, transport platforms, tractor-mounted forklift).
