Gallagher Group targets Brazil’s big ranches in new South American market move

Hamilton-based technology company Gallagher Group sees big growth potential in South America.

Gallagher Group’s animal and land management business is setting up shop in Brazil, tipped to be a major future producer of the world’s red meat supply as Europe’s livestock count shrinks.

The division of the Hamilton-headquartered multi-national believes the investment in a direct sales and service supply to Brazilian ranchers and agribusiness will see its South American contribution to total revenue rise from its present 3% to 10% within around four years, said chief executive Lisbeth Jacobs.

“The Brazilian market is very important in the agricultural sector and will become a lot more important. Livestock numbers are set to increase and Brazil is going to start feeding a lot of the world ... With numbers going down in parts of Europe, Brazil and some other Latin American countries will become suppliers to Europe,” she told the Herald.

Lisbeth Jacobs, chief executive of Gallagher Group's animal and land management division.

Founded 86 years ago with its invention of electric livestock fencing, Gallagher is today a technology company also specialising in human security solutions at some of the world’s most sensitive infrastructure and business sites. Animal and land management, the oldest of its business divisions, exports hardware and software to more than 160 countries to support precision farming. Its FY24 revenue was $220 million, up 5% on the previous financial year.

Jacobs said it had operated in Brazil for several years, but through distributors.

From the new office, the company would provide local agriculture with direct access to its technologies, including advanced electric fencing, virtual fencing, livestock weighing and electric identification systems, pest control, data collection and satellite liquid/water monitoring systems.

The target market would be large ranches.

One Gallagher product expected to do well in Brazil is the e-shepherd, a solar-powered, GPS-enabled livestock neckband that creates virtual fencing on that country’s vast livestock properties.

“It allows large operations to see where animals are and to move them around remotely,” Jacobs said.

“Now they have to send helicopters out or people on horseback, and sometimes the animals are two to three days away.”

Jacobs said some international companies Gallagher has working relationships with consider Brazil their third-most important potential market after North America and Europe.

It’s not Gallagher’s first time having feet on the ground in the South American market. It has had an office and warehouse in Chile for 10 years which employs about 10 people, Jacobs said.

The new Brazil office would foster relationships with local distributors, technology partners and industry stakeholders to help drive sustainable and profitable farming practices in the region, she said.

Jacobs declined to say how much Gallagher was investing but suggested the initiative topped $1 million.

Gallagher is a participant in a New Zealand trade mission to Brazil led by Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay. He is attending the Group of Twenty (G20) trade and investment ministerial meeting in Brasilia this week.

Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the $26 billion dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.