Agricultural machinery, the 65 million Fyeld cluster is born and focus on the US market

Agricultural machinery, the Fyeld group (a word that combines 'field' and 'yield') is born: a new name for a reality that originates from the integration of three Italian operators in the sector. Guaresi, a company controlled by the private equity Hyle Capital that deals with tomato harvesting machinery for the canning industry, based in Pilastri (Ferrara), has in fact acquired since last year first Grim, a company based in Jesi (Ancona) that makes self-propelled machines for spraying treatments on crops, and then Hortech, based in Agna (Padua), specialised in the production of machinery for harvesting horticultural products in open fields.

The group has two markets in its sights in particular: the US and Europe, first for precision farming and in the vanguard for artificial intelligence and hybrid and electric technologies, also driven by the Pnrr. In the US, in particular, Fyeld is focusing development activities in California, 'where there is a huge production of fourth range products in particular: spinach, valerian, rocket, salad. The Salinas valley is 7 times bigger than the Sele plain in Italy, one of the biggest European hubs for these products. California was the world's leading producer of canned tomatoes in 2023 and has enormous potential, given the extension and demand for harvest mechanisation that has not yet been met for other products, such as peppers and head lettuce, for which we already have proven technologies,' explain Guaresi CEO Massimo Zubelli and President Livio Marchiori.

Today the group sells in 130 countries. South America and China, the world's leading producer of tomatoes, are also among the development areas. And the expansion of processed crops is one of the growth drivers.

Fyeld aims to reach EUR 65 million in sales in 2024, after having consolidated EUR 53 million in 2023, two thirds of which will be generated abroad, with 130 employees. Further acquisitions are also on the horizon, again in the high-tech horticultural machinery sector. "We try to offer our customers all tools, from transplanting to crop protection to harvesting. At the moment we are looking at Italian companies, but we do not exclude operations abroad, particularly in the USA. From an Italian starting point, with an excellent technological and human resources base, we think we can also graft international growth. With companies that would otherwise not be able to achieve this on their own," note the CEO and president, and on the opening of offices abroad they add: "Since we do not delegate after-sales and customer management to third parties, if we develop an American market, for example, we cannot fail to pass through local structures.

The positive momentum in the canning tomato sector, driven by ready meals and caused on the one hand by the depletion of stocks during the pandemic and on the other hand by lower yields in the fields due to the drought, saw an expansion of cultivation areas and harvesting machines. To support this demand, the group put in place a plan to double its production capacity. "With Guaresi and Grim we had 34 thousand square metres of total area, 11 thousand of which were covered. Today, with Hortech and the new Grim plant, we arrive at 53 thousand square metres, 19,500 of which are covered," say Zubelli and Marchiori. The work is also on the synergies between production poles, which are being implemented after the acquisitions. "The annual quota of investments for this activity as well as for product innovation, for example for electrification, data management, and sensor technology mounted on machinery, is around 6% of the turnover," they add.