Lindsay Corporation (LNN), a leading global manufacturer and distributor of irrigation and infrastructure equipment and technology, today announced it has agreed to acquire a 49.9 percent minority interest in Austria-based Pessl Instruments GmbH, with an option to acquire the remainder of the company at a later date. Pessl is a leading global provider of advanced agricultural technology solutions under the METOS® brand and offers IoT hardware and software tools for informed decision-making, including field monitoring systems with a wide array of agronomic data points that inform Lindsay’s award-winning FieldNET® remote irrigation management platform. This investment by Lindsay comes less than a year after the two companies had initially entered into a strategic partnership, announced in May of 2023, to leverage the combined expertise of both companies and expand value enhancement to growers.
Pessl boasts more than 80,000 connected in-field data collection devices globally, with 50,000 active customers using its FieldClimate online interface. These connected devices include weather stations, soil moisture probes, insect monitoring traps, crop monitoring cameras, soil and nutrient sampling, machine and asset trackers, and other sensors providing real-time data on key agronomic health indicators. Coupled with Lindsay’s FieldNET Advisor™ platform, which synthesizes millions of data points to make custom recommendations to growers for precise, efficient water application, METOS® and FieldNET® provide a leading-edge solution that opens the door for ground-breaking future innovations in the utilization of artificial intelligence in agriculture, grounded in measurable, precise, and instantaneous data validation.
“Lindsay remains committed to providing world-class solutions to growers around the globe while also delivering incredible value for our shareholders,” said Randy Wood, President and CEO of Lindsay. “This investment broadens and strengthens our existing partnership with Pessl, accelerating innovations in water management, increasing our global reach, and providing new solutions needed to conserve natural resources and expand our world’s potential. I’m excited to see how our teams work together to revolutionize the way data is used to inform smart decisions and to maximize our world’s precious resources.”
The investment will strengthen both Lindsay’s and Pessl’s leadership positions in key global markets, enabling Pessl to benefit from Lindsay’s leading position in row crop applications and Lindsay to benefit from Pessl’s leading position in specialty crop applications. Last year, the two organizations announced a strategic partnership that has already revealed synergistic potential to unlock incremental value and problem-solving solutions for agricultural producers worldwide. This formal investment will make Lindsay and Pessl, together, the clear global in-field connected irrigation device leader.
Gottfried Pessl, CEO & Founder of Pessl, shared “Over the last year, we have had the opportunity to connect with farmers worldwide and demonstrate how they can leverage the combined potential of METOS hardware and software solutions and Lindsay’s suite of agtech products. The feedback has been fantastic, and the results speak for themselves. We are excited about the potential this investment provides, the innovation it will facilitate, and the opportunity to expand and further integrate with Lindsay, a proven leader in agtech.”
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2024, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.
