AGCO Announces New Precision Ag Brand

AGCO Corp. has announced the formation of its new precision ag brand, PTx.

PTx includes AGCO's Precision Planting business. PTx also includes PTx Trimble, the result of an earlier $2-billion deal between Trimble and AGCO -- AGCO purchasing Trimble's ag assets, those merged with AGCO's JCA Technologies.

"I've been in the industry my whole life. At this intersection of agriculture and innovation, it's the most exciting time in my career," AGCO CEO Eric Hansotia told DTN/Progressive Farmer. "There's so much excitement in the organization with my whole leadership team ... about what this can mean for farmers. It's the biggest ag tech deal in history. And, we want to make the most of it and to do that quickly."

Seth Crawford, AGCO senior vice president and general manager PTx, will lead the new organization. Andrew Sunderman, a 12-year veteran of AGCO, has been named general manager of PTx Trimble. Keith Crow will continue to lead Precision Planting as general manager.

Here are excerpts from an interview with CEO Eric Hansotia about PTx.

DTN/PF: This is a big day, something you've been working toward for several months. Give us an overall picture of what this means for AGCO.

Hansotia: If you don't mind, I'll actually answer that with what it means for farmers. We're going to serve farmers -- the farmer that already has a piece of equipment who wants [a] retrofit upgrade, we'll serve the farmer that wants a new piece of equipment from one of our OEM partners or a new piece of equipment from one of our brands. The whole notion here is bringing the two best teams together to innovate faster, innovate more all the way around the crop cycle to solve some of the toughest problems in farming.

DTN/PF: Would you explain the structure of PTx?

Hansotia: PTx is precision technologies multiplied ... big P, big T, small x. That's the umbrella name or brand over the entire tech business unit within AGCO. One component is this new [joint venture] we formed as the Trimble ag team plus JCA. That's called PTx Trimble. The other element of PTx is Precision Planting. It'll be PTx Trimble and Precision Planting working side by side to create one overall experience. That's precision technologies multiplied.

DTN/PF: What should farmers expect today now that PTx is officially up and running?

Hansotia: What [farmers] should expect is that we're accelerating the pace of innovation, and accelerating the scope of innovation ... from soil-sampling to planting and air-seeding to application equipment to harvesting, water management, carbon management.

DTN/PF: PTx will build technologies for any brand of machine, new or existing. Regarding existing machinery, what is AGCO's retrofitting target?

Hansotia: Trimble [has] 10,000 models of machinery out there where they had designed retrofit capabilities where you could put their guidance on to an old tractor or an old sprayer and older combine. The retrofit capabilities largely coming out of Precision Planting are all model dependent -- [what's] the core technology they're building off of.

DTN/PF: What are your first goals?

Hansotia: There are a lot of people who historically bought Trimble technology. We want to reassure them that all of the great experiences they had with that technology will continue and that we aim to continue to support them as well or better than they've ever been supported in the past. So, that's one element. Second thing is reassuring and building confidence around the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) customer. A third element is standing up the AGCO channel. We're going to [get] the AGCO dealers focused on selling Trimble technology through the AGCO channel.

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-- Visit the new PTx website at https://www.ptxag.com/…

-- Follow Dan on social platform X @DMillerPF

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