A historic Canadian name in the forage seed business is about to end its run, as its owner tightens up its branding in North America.
Danish forage and turf seed firm DLF announced Oct. 6 it has “unified its brand and business” under that name, dropping the “DLF Pickseed” moniker it had used in North America since acquiring Canadian firm Pickseed in 2013.
DLF said it’s also moving its business structure from geographical divisions to “functional groups” and creating “leadership-by-function to bond its teams together versus dividing them by country.”
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That new structure “allows for collaboration across operations and shared services that are foundational to sustainable growth and customer success,” the company said in a release.
The announcement follows DLF’s adoption in September of a new logo and “corporate visual identity” (CVI), which it described at the time as “a step in direction of a more uniform and united appearance.”
“This evolution synchronizes the influence of DLF’s highly recognized regional brands into a common, stronger identity,” Neil Douglas, executive vice-president for DLF North America, said Oct. 6. “As DLF, our North American voice becomes amplified, empowered, and important on the global seed stage.”
That said, the Pickseed brand “has a strong legacy in several of the markets we serve, and we will continue to honour it as we evolve,” he added.
Founded in 1947 as Otto Pick Agricultural Service, Pickseed at first focused on direct sales of improved forage seed to southern Ontario livestock producers, based on the then-relatively-new concept of “permanent pasture.”
Otto Pick’s sons and wife took over the business following his death in 1959, expanding into turfgrass products and expanding both west and east with a Manitoba seed production unit, a processing plant in Winnipeg and a distribution site at St-Hyacinthe, Que.
The company later expanded into the U.S. in the 1970s through Oregon-based Pickseed West, and took over one of Canada’s biggest forage and turfgrass seed businesses, the seed division of Maple Leaf Mills, in 1981.
The Pickseed Companies Group was then fully taken over in 2013 by what was then known as DLF-Trifolium. DLF is majority-owned by a Danish grass seed farmers’ co-operative and at the time was already considered the world’s biggest producer of grass and clover seed.
The Pickseed deal gave DLF its toehold in North America, with “access to research and development and production and distribution channels in Canada as well as opportunities the within the U.S. market.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network
