Client’s Goals

Our client, a leading micronutrient supplier for agriculture and feed industry, engaged MarketsandMarkets to grow revenues. We offered end-user market insights for amino acid-based chelates within the agricultural industry. Our advisory assistance helped the client in defining and solving a series of problems. Three of the key problems solved during the engagement are:

• Identification of opportunities with respect to "where to play"" and ""how to enter"" (identify distribution partners) scenarios
• Insights on market assessment
• Competitive intelligence

Our Approach

Our AI-driven market intelligence platform was leveraged to gain deep-dive insights on market assessment and competitive intelligence, based on various parameters, to funnel down to the most emerging markets and prioritize them. With a view to attain a 360-degree viewpoint, our analysts conducted interviews with product development managers, marketing managers, and country heads of micronutrient suppliers with a view to understand the demand-supply gap. Also, we accessed our database of distributional partners across various regions to understand the supply side scenario and analyze suitable distribution partners. This helped our client services team to generate revenue impact for the client by strategizing revenue planning.

Revenue Shifts Identified

Due to the various known hazards of the non-biodegradable chelating agents, the amino acid chelates are emerging as state-of-the-art technology for delivering selected micronutrients with maximum bioavailability, tolerance and safety. These are mainly used more with the primary objective of removing metals that can affect the plant and soil health, and avoiding the precipitation of these toxic metals into the soil.

Interconnections

There is a need for sustainable sourcing of raw materials for micronutrient production due to declining levels of micronutrients in soil, feed, food and mineral reserves. New generations of chelates are being developed and emphasis is being laid on sugar-based chelating agents to make micronutrients more effective. Such chelated micronutrients contain no EDTA chelates. The application of chelating agents such as sugar acid derivatives, condensed tannins and glucoheptonates is expected to gain traction as substitutes for the traditionally used EDTA for preparing chelated micronutrients.

Unknowns Identified

Amino acid chelates are available as liquids or powders and generally available for use in organic food production. The organic market is rising steeply and that too in the developed regions, with the important markets being countries such as the US, Germany, and France.  These chelating agents are a suitable alternative to conventional agricultural chelates, such as EDTA, as they are biodegradable. Amino acid chelates are especially suitable for greenhouse and hydroponic systems because they are usually certified organic, readily available for plant uptake through plants roots and foliage, and generally are not phytotoxic.

Revenue Impact (RI)

Our insights helped the client to identify suitable partner for the distribution of their innovative amino acid-based micronutrient chelates. In addition, our insights on high-growth markets has projected to create a revenue impact of ~USD 80 million in the next 2 years.