Winfield Solutions entered a purchase agreement for the acquisition of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Matrix Turf Solutions.
Matrix Turf’s primary focus is turf and ornamental, servicing New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey. Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
WinField has 80 service centers nationwide and more than 75 sales representatives in golf course management, lawn and sports turf management, pest control, aquatics, ornamental and vegetative management markets.
The acquisition is expected to strengthen WinField’s Northeast presence, said Kanchan Chavan, director of WinField’s professional products group.
“This acquisition will allow WinField to grow its business and leverage existing distribution infrastructure in the Northeastern United States,” Chavan said. “This represents another step forward as we continue to position WinField as a leading player in the professional products industry and execute on our strategic priorities of growth, efficiency and capability.”
Acquiring regional distributors has been a strategy for Winfield over the past few years since it expanded from the crop side of the market into the professional products side, Chavan said. The most notable is the purchase of Precision Turf & Chemical, based in Greenfield, Minn., in 2012 to serve the Upper Midwest.
Winfield is owned by St. Paul, Minn.-based Land O’ Lakes, whose core philosophy is to be the No. 1 or No. 2 player in every market it’s in, Chavan said. As such, it has plans to grow even further.
“The next hole we have is the Mid-Atlantic–the Carolinas and so forth,” Chavan said, noting an acquisition can take up to two years to go through. “Now that we have a good footprint, we want to deepen that core.”
WinField also recently entered a purchase agreement for the acquisition of the professional products business assets and inventory of Wilco-WinField JV, which primarily services the turf and ornamental segments in the Pacific Northwest.
Both acquisitions are scheduled to be complete by Sept. 30 and are subject to customary closing conditions.
Updated 9/23/13.
