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LANSING, Mich., Jan. 6, 2020 — Neogen Corporation (NASDAQ: NEOG) announced today that it has acquired Productos Quimicos Magiar (Magiar) — a distributor of Neogen’s food safety diagnostics for the past 20 years with businesses in Argentina and Uruguay.
With the acquisition, the former Magiar operations will stay in the two countries and provide Neogen with a physical presence in the important agricultural Southern Cone region of South America, which has large beef and dairy populations with significant export markets. The operations will be managed through Neogen’s Latin American operations and will now offer direct sales of Neogen food safety, animal safety and genomic products into Argentina and Uruguay.
“The acquisition of Magiar’s businesses in the two countries is a bet that we are making on ourselves,” said Pierre Belhadj, Neogen’s senior director for the Latin American region. “We will immediately recapture distributor profits, and have a direct sales and technical service presence for our full suite of products in the Southern Cone. We have retained key personnel to ensure the same level of service and consistency Magiar’s customers have come to expect from the company.”
Magiar was founded in 1991, and has marketed diagnostic products for animal feed and food quality control.
According to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, Argentina is the world’s fourth largest exporter of beef and veal (behind Brazil, India and Australia), and Uruguay is the seventh largest. Argentina is also a leading exporter of milk.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Neogen Corporation develops and markets products dedicated to food and animal safety. The company’s Food Safety Division markets dehydrated culture media, and diagnostic test kits to detect foodborne bacteria, natural toxins, food allergens, drug residues, plant diseases and sanitation concerns. Neogen’s Animal Safety Division is a leader in the development of animal genomics along with the manufacturing and distribution of a variety of animal healthcare products, including diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, veterinary instruments, wound care and disinfectants.