The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
| The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
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| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | US8101861065 |
| founding | 1868 |
| Seat | Marysville , United States |
| management | James Hagedorn, CEO |
| Number of employees | 4,700 |
| sales | 2,642,000,000 USD |
| Website | www.thescottsmiraclegrocompany.com |
| As of September 30, 2017 | |
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is an American manufacturer and marketer of branded articles for garden and plant care as well as related areas for the target group private consumers . These include or included primarily the product areas fertilizers , pesticides and biocides for pest control in the household, as well as plant substrates , lawn seed and garden bird seed .
Scotts is the market leader in the USA (market share in lawn care over 50%) and was also market leader in Germany (market share in 2010 in crop protection 33%) before the European and Australian business was sold to London-based Exponent Private Equity LLP in 2017 .
Scotts' CEO is Jim Hagedorn.
The NYSE- listed company mainly operates in North America and works with various sales partners. Scotts is the exclusive marketing and sales partner for the private customer sector in the USA and most of Europe for the means Roundup from the brand owner Monsanto . In the USA, with the Scotts LawnService , the company offers on- site lawn and wood fertilization, insect control and other services from 160 locations and is also the market leader in this area.
Legal headquarters are in Marysville , Ohio . The German subsidiary Scotts Celaflor GmbH was based in Mainz , where the successor company Evergreen Garden Care Deutschland GmbH is still based.
Brands
In North America: Scotts , Miracle-Gro , Ortho , Roundup (exclusive distribution for the brand owner Monsanto ), internationally also Evergreen , Fertiligène , KB , Weedol , Pathclear . The best-known umbrella brands in German-speaking countries also include: Celaflor , Naturen , Substral and Nexa Lotte .
history
The company was founded in 1868 by the Ohio-born and 1870 drawn to Marysville Civil War veteran Orlando McLean Scott OM Scott & Sons . In 1870 he bought a hardware store with a machine for the mechanical cleaning of grain seeds. First he delivered to the farmers in the US agribusiness. Since 1870, when a mail order division was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, Scotts also sold lawn seeds to private consumers. Sons Dwight and Hubert had joined the company around this time. Gradually Scotts specialized in the lawn seed business. As early as 1921, Scotts was supplying a fifth of all American golf courses with grass seeds. In 1928 Scotts launched Turf Builder, the very first special lawn fertilizer, and in 1957, Trionizer, a three-nutrient complete fertilizer. In the same year it started its own advertising magazine, Lawn Care, which reached millions of subscribers in the years after the Second World War. Sales were strengthened by resellers. As a result of increasing affluence and urban exodus in the United States, the number of single-family homes with gardens and ornamental lawns flourished. During this time, the company set up its own research and development campus (the Dwight G. Scott Research Center ). Various newly developed herbicides were presented, including the first that acts selectively against broad-leaved grass weeds in the lawn. In addition, the first seed spreader, the first patented meadow panicle grass variety (Kentucky bluegrass, Poa pratensis) and much more. The family business, which has grown rapidly, was given a different legal structure, with the involvement of external partners.
In 1971 OM Scott & Sons was bought by ITT under Harold Geneen . At the same time that the controversial ITT was negotiating an antitrust lawsuit with the US Department of Justice, Scott & Sons was building a golf course for free on Richard Nixon's California property in San Clemente . In 1972, Scotts innovated to set up a toll-free telephone service hotline that took up to 400,000 calls a year. Under the subsequent ITT CEO Tadd C. Seitz , Scotts' sales quadrupled through restructuring and strategic takeovers. Since Scotts had always remained a foreign body in the group, ITT sold its subsidiary in 1986 by means of a leveraged buyout to CDS Holding Corp. for 211 million dollars . , 61% owned by investment banker Clayton Dubilier . The remaining shares were mainly held by ITT managers, whom Dubilier had given credit for the purchase. By the 1990s, when the environmental movement had grown, Scotts developed biological pesticides , in part with the Sandoz Crop Protection Corporation. The takeover of Hyponex added potting soil, soil improvers, bark mulch and other ranges to the product portfolio. After buying Republic Tool & Manufacturing in 1992, the company was able to offer its own spreading equipment. With the takeover of Grace-Sierra Horticultural Products Co. in 1993, from which the professional division of Scotts subsequently developed, the long-term fertilizer brand Osmocote came to Scotts.
In 1995 Scotts merged with the company Miracle-Gro , founded in 1950 by the marketing specialist Horace Hagedorn and the gardener Otto Stern and which has grown into one of the largest manufacturers and marketers of special liquid plant fertilizers for home users in the USA, to form The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company , which was now the world leader in lawn and garden maintenance.
This was followed by a phase of strong international expansion through acquisitions: In 1997 Scotts Miracle-Gro expanded its business area by taking over the British company Miracle Garden Care Ltd. and Levington Horticulture Ltd. on Europe. Further acquisitions were the organic fertilizer company Earthgro and the lawn care service provider Emerald Green Lawn Service, which resulted in Scotts Lawn Service. In 1998 Scott took over the biotechnology company Sanford Scientific. This was followed by the acquisition of the garden product division of Rhône-Poulenc with the brands KB, Fertiligene, Celaflor and Nexalotte, which had been leading in continental Europe until then , together with the Dutch-Belgian fertilizer and crop protection agent dealer ASEF for a total of 220 million dollars, making it market leader for products in the private garden sector was also achieved in Europe. In addition, Scotts acquired the Shamrock brand for British and Irish peat products.
From the mid-1990s, Scotts got into genetic engineering . Together with Monsanto , they developed a genetically modified ostrich grass (Agrostis stolonifera, it is mainly used in seed mixtures for golf course greens) that tolerates treatment with the herbicide Roundup (Roundup Ready Creeping Bentgrass, RRCB). It would be the world's first genetically modified turf grass, but so far it has only received one test approval. In 2005/2006 Scotts bought its main competitor in the field, the biotechnology companies Turf-Seed and Pure-Seed Testing, founded by Bill Rose, a pioneer in the field of lawn cultivation and a leading breeder. They had also developed Roundup-tolerant turf grasses (HybriGene, Aurora Gold3) through genetic methods ( CMS , safer due to infertility) and conventional breeding. Rose was one of the fiercest critics of Scotts / Monsanto's development. Scotts signed a distribution agreement with Monsanto in 1999 for the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and Australia, exclusive marketing rights in the consumer market to Monsanto's herbicide brand Roundup, as well as the purchase of the Ortho umbrella brand and other business areas.
Due to the rapid growth, a new world headquarters was established in nearby Columbus (Ohio) in 1998 , Marysville became the North American headquarters and the European headquarters in Lyon , France . In addition to the fertilizer production facility in Marysville, Scotts now has numerous other manufacturing capacities in the USA and Europe as well as sales offices worldwide.
In the years 2005 to 2008, the company sold birdseed in the USA that had been treated with a pesticide that was also highly toxic for birds, although warnings from its own company were issued by 2007 at the latest. Scotts Miracle-Gro was fined several million dollars and sold the division to Global Harvest Foods Ltd. in 2014.
In February 2011, the Scotts Professional branch with 90 hectares of turf test areas in four research centers in different climate zones, as well as the production facilities in Heerlen / Netherlands and Charleston (South Carolina) / USA and brands such as Osmocote to Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL, majority shareholder is the Israel Corporation ) and has been operating as Everris ever since .
The European and Australian business was sold to London-based financial investor Exponent Private Equity LLP for $ 250 million in 2017 on the grounds that they wanted to focus entirely on the home market. This division now appears in Europe under the name Evergreen Garden (as of 2020), in German-speaking countries with the brands Nexa Lotte , Substral , Naturen and Roundup .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b 2017 Form 10-K Report , accessed December 19, 2017
- ↑ Market share in the lawn care sector
- ↑ Market share in the crop protection sector
- ↑ ITT: Global corporation between politics and profit . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1973, p. 82-93 ( online - 9 July 1973 ).
- ↑ Scott bulids camp base in Europe
- ↑ Roundup Ready Creeping Bentgrass ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Page no longer retrievable , search in web archives: test approval ( page no longer accessible , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Criticism ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Organicconsumers.org
- ^ Criticism ( memento from July 31, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on Golfdom
- ^ Review on Golfcourseindustry.com
- ↑ Everris
- ^ Columbus Business First Scotts Miracle-Gro finalizes $ 250M sale of European and Australian businesses to London private equity firm, part of North American Project Focus
