Techna business reorganization shows it’s not only about nutrition

The move is to “better address the challenges facing today’s agri-food industry,​” the Nantes-based Techna announced last week.

Its portfolio had hitherto included products for the aquaculture, livestock, crops and horse segments, as well as a services segment that focused on developing and using tools to monitor precision nutrition.

New structure ​

It has since been organized into five businesses in a structure devised to allow each one to operate in its own right as a brand.

Of these, Feedia will offer advice, analytics and precision nutrition to compound feed manufacturers, while Aquaneo will provide products and services to fish and prawn producers, and food manufacturers in the aquaculture segment. Techna’s plant production unit will support and stimulate crops under the Greenov brand, and Natual will provide nutritional specialties to manage the main physiological functions of livestock with no withdrawal periods, residual traces or resistance.

The final new brand, Paskacheval, markets nutrition, hygiene and leather care products for horses.

Employee-owned Techna, which generated a €55m turnover in 2017, now becomes the corporate brand for all activities in France and the seven other countries in which it operates.

The new branding strategy will focus on the three main pillars of performance, nature and respect, Techna’s marketing chief, Tatiana Guérin, told FeedNavigator at VIV Asia in Bangkok last week.

“We have changed the organization of our company to address how the market is changing, and so are our customers​,” she said.

“There have been so many constraints in feed, such as a bans on antibiotics in Europe and increasingly in Asia. Today the products we provide have to perform strongly, they have to be natural and they must respect people, animals and the environment​.”

Though the new brands cover a number of product and service areas, Guérin maintains Techna continues to be especially close to animal nutrition—its focus since it was founded in 1964—though new areas of interest have expanded over the years.

“In the beginning we were closely linked to nutrition. That was our DNA​,” she said. “Today, Techna is not only about nutrition. We are more than nutrition and we want people to know this. Our solutions help our customers to see better performance​.”

Welfare, sustainability drivers ​

Techna’s chief executive, Christian Bluard, said consumers are demanding more ethical production methods and more respectful use of resources.

“The upstream sector has a crucial role to play in this evolving environment,” ​he said.​

He said Techna is looking to optimize the use of the proteins ingested by ruminants, restore the animal's main physiological functions, enhance the gastrointestinal use of nutrients and reduce the use of pesticides on crops.