| Fertilizers

ICL signs development partnership with startup Idealab Biotechnology

One month after acquiring Nitro 1000, the company announces the development of new biological products in partnership with the Brazilian startup from Piracicaba

11.04.2024 | 17:19 (UTC -3)

Cláudia Santos, Cultivar Magazine edition

Alfredo Kober (CEO of ICL in South America); Elad Aharonson (Global President of ICL Growing Solutions); Ronaldo Dalio (CEO of Ideelab), Michel Castellani (director of research and development at ICL in South America); Ithamar Prada (vice president of marketing and innovation at ICL in South America); Victor Scotton (ICL's B2C commercial vice president in South America); Reginaldo Costa (commercial director of the Dimicron, Maximus and Aminoagro brands) — **Alfredo Kober** (CEO of ICL in South America); **Elad Aaronson** (Global President of ICL Growing Solutions); **Ronaldo Dalio** (CEO of Idealab), **Michelle Castellani** (director of research and development at ICL in South America); **Ithamar Prada** (vice president of marketing and innovation at ICL in South America); **Victor Scotton** (B2C commercial vice president of ICL in South America); **Reginaldo Costa** (commercial director of the Dimicron, Maximus and Aminoagro brands)

ICL announced the establishment of a partnership with the startup Ideelab Biotecnologia, focused on innovative technologies in biological products. The goal is to develop six new products that use Idealab's advanced technologies over the next three years.

One month after acquiring the company Nitro 1000, ICL moves forward with the strategy of strengthening its portfolio of sustainable solutions. Since Ideelab presented its technologies, in 2022, at the launch of the ICL Planet Hub in Brazil, an acceleration program carried out in partnership with AgTech Garage, the two companies have been working together to identify opportunities to develop new products that combine expertise from ICL in plant nutrition and physiology to Idealab's technological innovation platforms.

“The partnership with Ideelab will accelerate the process of developing innovative solutions for agriculture, ICL's DNA, through the technological base of biologicals, allowing us to offer an even more complete and sustainable portfolio of solutions to our customers", says Michel Castellani, Director of Research and Development at ICL.

"Ideelab has know-how and a technological structure that complements ICL's and, therefore, we believe that this collaboration will generate a lot of innovation for the sector", he adds.

Paulista de Piracicaba, Ideelab was founded in 2019 and, since then, has been developing advanced solutions for the agricultural market, focusing on next-generation biologicals, based on metabolites, proteins and other types of active ingredients produced by microorganisms. The partnership will be leveraged by the Ideelab biofactory, planned to operate at the beginning of 2025, with a fermentation capacity of 6 million liters, designed to industrialize the next generations of biological technology for the market.

For Ronaldo Dalio, CEO of Ideelab, establishing this partnership with a company already a leader in plant physiology nutrition means accelerating the generation of innovation for Brazilian agribusiness, with potential impact on a global scale. “From the first conversations, ICL’s ambition to develop disruptive innovation with biological products for agriculture with the aim of offering sustainable and regenerative solutions for food production on a global scale was very clear”, highlights Dalio. “This synergy of purposes brought us together and helped us quickly build a partnership”, he concludes.