Industry Insights: ADAMA CEO Steve Hawkins on a New Organizational Structure, Strategy for Off-Patent AIs

Renee Targos By Renee Targos|16 July 2024

AgriBusiness Global recently interviewed Steve Hawkins, President and CEO for ADAMA, about how the company restructured its manufacturing and innovation departments to bring value to ADAMA products and increase future sales, as well as its strategy for existing AIs.

ABG: Can you give me a specific example of what ADAMA is doing to improve sales?
Steve Hawkins: We started changes in the organization in Q4 of last year and leading into this year, where we restructured manufacturing to focus on making active ingredients and procurement. The focus on the production side was to build up the local production of products, recognizing that location helps raise the responsiveness level to customers. So that’s the manufacturing side — the cost of goods and responsiveness to customers.

On the differentiated product innovation side, we integrated our marketing and our development R&D functions so that we could create a more end-to-end innovation machine and bring new products to market faster based on local customer needs. It also helps with the ability to quickly access off-patent AI’s.

There are approximately 24 major AIs coming off patent in the next three years, so we’ll be able to get our hands on those with greater speed. We have plans for which AIs to focus on, and then intend to develop those new products and bring them to market faster based on our new organizational structure.

ABG: Can you talk a little bit about selecting AIs and how ADAMA is targeting markets?
SH: It’s stepping back and looking at our future demand plans in specific markets, so we’ve got the right asset footprint for the markets we see continuing to grow. The pandemic shifted the markets a bit, so we are focusing on the markets that we see as faster growing in the future.

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On the innovation side, it’s retooling our innovation machine. In 2024, we’re ensuring that we have the right technology innovation model focused on the right market and especially thinking about farmer needs in these markets and how we can address their pain points. One of the key takeaways from the pandemic is that there’s what we call a value innovation, large-market segment that’s not completely commoditized.

It’s that big middle segment that we believe will grow strongly around the world. For that segment we are bringing unique mixtures and formulations, not new active ingredients. These products offer a high return on investment with tangible benefits to growers such as improved efficacy, enhanced product usability, and sustainability. We’re turning our active ingredients portfolio into an innovation engine by optimizing the performance of existing AIs with proprietary, advanced formulation technology platforms.

ABG: What 2024 market opportunities are you observing, such as off-patent AIs?

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Editor’s note: This exclusive Industry Insights interview with ADAMA CEO Steve Hawkins is part of a three-part series. You can access the entire series here.

Renee Targos, as Editor of AgriBusiness GlobalTM Direct magazine, leads in content development, event programming, and managing the ABG Board of Advisors and strategic growth of the magazine. Renee’s professional experience covers more than two decades of national and international digital and print content development, editing, and journalism. She received a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University and continued her education with master’s level courses in business administration and behavioral analysis. Renee has served as a board member for several Arizona-based non-profits and government commissions. See all author stories here.

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