American Vanguard Corporation (NYSE:AVD), through its principal operating subsidiary, AMVAC Chemical Corporation, today announced the signing of an agreement to acquire  certain US assets relating to the three crop protection product lines — Abamectin, Chlorothalonil and Paraquat — from subsidiaries of Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd., which is part of the China National Chemical Corporation (“ChemChina”) group. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.  

The acquisition is part of a consent agreement between the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”), on the one hand, and ChemChina and Syngenta AG, on the other hand, under which ChemChina is required to divest these assets as a pre-condition for ChemChina’s proposed acquisition of Syngenta AG. The FTC published the subject consent decree on its website on April 4, 2017, is soliciting public comment for a period of 30 days and will also publish it in the Federal Register imminently.  

The assets include trademarks, product registrations, registration data, and commercial information that relate to the marketing and sale of these three products in the crop protection market within the United States.  

Eric Wintemute, Chairman & CEO of American Vanguard commented: “We are excited about the prospect of acquiring these product lines for crop use domestically. For some time, we have been reporting that industry consolidation will result in acquisition opportunities, and this is exactly the kind of deal that we had been anticipating.  We expect to give more color on this deal once the ChemChina-Syngenta merger closes.”