At last: transparency on Active Ingredient prices in UK agrochemicals

Ag Chem active ingredients present a complex challenge to farmers today, with thousands of brands on the market, and no transparency on relative cost or value of these options.

The determining effect of your agrochemical is the active ingredient it contains, while its formulation offers some marginal differences in performance and mixing ability. Active ingredients are often produced at a global scale from few factories, and tightly controlled by registration owners into a national market.

A wide range of brands you know on farm may in fact share an active molecule which comes from a single production line.

In April this year we showed how like-for-like brand prices could vary on farms, highlighting that farmers should be vigilant on brand pricing.

Deepening our research, we carried out an analysis of 4’000 products available in the UK market, to determine the delivered cost per gram of active ingredient to the farmer (where registered for the same crop).

This gives us a full view on the cost of key chemistries on the market, available to subscribers to our Price Check service – an indispensable tool for farm managers looking to control cost of production.

We see a stark variation in price for many active ingredients, depending on the source and brand they are sold under. Here are some of the widest price spreads on the UK market:

Watch Out: We often see the widest variations where UK distributors hold exclusive rights over a brand. We will uncover more on these brands in this blog series.

Through our chemicals advisory service, we help farmers cut through these complexities to find the most cost effective approach for their farm needs.

With Yagro Price Check you get full transparency on ag chem pricing in the UK market, through access to our database of tens of thousands of price points.