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AGCO to acquire Laverda Plant

40K views 183 replies 37 participants last post by  tellarian 
#1 ·
#7 ·
First, Agco already sells Laverda combines under Fendt and MF colours since 2004. So who cares if they change colour to MF only? Eliminating redundant brands is a good business idea. Agco has been in the business for 20 years and went from a 200 million turnover to 5 billion + is less than 20 years. Yes they acquired many brands, but they also succeeded at exploiting and maximising their brand and technological portfolio to expand the core brands (MF, Fendt, Vlatra, Challenger). And the deal is good because Agco now gets a stronger foothold in the European hay equipment sector with Fella. Europe is their main market, so obviously they have to worry about it. US is a growing market for them, but it is still small. They have a range of products that's appealing, a lot of leading technology. But the American market is different because a lot of it is based on irrational emotional buying based on colour rather than features (Agco orange tractors for example). So they probably prefer dealing with customers who are in ag to make money, not to be emotional about the colour of their tractor.
 
#3 ·
They also bought another parts supplier yesterday,they are cash rich right now and looking for some good investment opportunities.Hey Connor,it does not matter what Agco does,you and the last five guys that bought orange tractors will not be happy,buy a Kubota,I heard that they are a good tractor.;)
 
#10 ·
And like I said the dumbass running the joint only cares about Europe and not NA. Everybody like to appluad Agco for what they've done in the last 20 years, how they've grown, blah, blah. All they've done is shoot themselves in the foot left and right. What's happened to all the former White, Allis/Gleaner, even some MF dealers during the Agco era? They've disappeared. Hate to tell you but Agcos strategy of buying every company they can get their hands on really hasn't treated them very well. Yeah they've grown, and yeah they've been making more and more money. But their focus is shifting further and further away from the market that gave them their start. And sooner or later enough will be enough and Agco will have run themselves out of North America.
 
#12 ·
Connor are you by chance a White fan? or maybe AC? CanadianFarmer had it right, if Agco was such a terrible failure then why did they go from a $200 million company to a $6 billion one? They might have risen out of AC's ashes, but now its on to greener pastures, or should I say Massey red pastures. I will be very surprised if cutting orange tractors will impact Agco one single bit.
 
#13 ·
Overall maybe not. But for those who can't open their eyes and see how things are going I'll just tell you now that Agco is slipping from North America more and more. If North America wanted Massey then maybe they would've bought their crap years ago and not shunned them to overseas markets. I'm sure they'll continue to do just fine in Europe but I'm not in Europe and I don't want Massey Ferguson equipment. Their NA dealer network has more than just tanked in the last 20 years since Agco was formed. Reports always say sales are up, but where? They ruined White and Allis to bring out the Challenger line which should never be included in the same sentence with the word success. They don't seem to give a **** about Gleaner, not until recently anyway, but by now it may be too late.

At this point I could honestly say I wouldn't mind it if Case bought the Gleaner combine. I'd probably still buy it even if it were painted red and said Case IH on it. I'd probably even still buy it if it were green and yellow and said John Deere on it. But I will not buy it if it get painted red and says Massey Ferguson on it. But Agco doesn't really care about me anyway, even though my shed if full of their equpment from tractors to planters to a combine and heads, and even some Sunflower tillage equipment. But if they want to switch everything to Massey puke red then that's fine, I will no longer buy their any of the equipment. And obviously I'm not the only one. One lost customer doesn't sound bad but one becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight....and I think you get the rest of it.
 
#14 ·
Its all the same technology though, regardless of color. There are some DIE HARD Oliver fans farming right down the road from us that have stayed on board with Agco. They had Olivers, then Whites, then an Agco DT160, and now I drove by their place and guess what? Massey 7495. All the technology from all the companies is basically rolled into the the Massey/Challengers. That would be like someone saying f*** Steiger just because the paint changed to CIH Red, or Versatile changed to NH Blue.
 
#17 ·
And that's the whole point. This farm started with Olivers, then switched to Whites, and have even switch to an AGCO DT orange tractor. But where and when does it stop? What's going to be next when Agco realizes this move isn't working quite like they thought it was? What will we have in another ten years for brands and colors in the Agco stable? Or will Agco still be here in NA?

Looking back Agco has driven a lot of good companies and names into the ground. And look at how much money they spent doing it. Sounds like a great strategy, "Lets spend millions upon millions upon millions to buy up all these companies only to drive them into the ground and get rid of them later"! It wouldn't be so bad if they had kept some of the products and machines around, but that's a lot of money just to vanish everything into thin air like they were never there.

Honestly I think if anybody still wants most of the current Agco products to stick around they better start writing Agco letters trying to pursuade them to start selling off their product lines. Sell the Gleaner and White planter lines, and even Sunflower. Agco can keep Massey and their bullshit. Oh crap, but wait....Massey wouldn't have any product lines if it wasn't for all the other brands that Agco wants to ruin by turning them into Massey!

I'm still very highly doubting that the one Agco dealer I have nearby is going to do any good at having to make the switch to selling Massey tractors now or anything else branded Massey. I can honestly see them dropping Agco all together and going back to being a Case IH only dealer. Nobody around here wants Massey, if they did they would've been buying it. Again, Agco please quit trying to shove it down my throat and make me buy it. Do the retards at Agco really think that no Agco guys, no matter what color they run, will switch to Deere or Case or even NH because of all this. Well Agco I hate to tell you but you have a huge eye opener coming. Not all the Agco orange and silver people are just going to say "well okay, we'll gladly switch to Massey".
 
#16 ·
For me, it isn't a color thing, it is loosing dealers critical to keeping me up and going. We have the full Agco rainbow here, but not all are equal, nor near as convenient. Besides if we don't holler a bit, it will make it too easy to lay waste to the next brand name that I probably own.
 
#20 ·
I will admit that I get a chuckle out of those on this thread who are so busy bemoaning the disappearance of various American combine and tractor manufacturers and are accusing the more successful manufacturers even when their corporation's share prices are rising, of incompetence and various other crimes against humanity.

American corporations buying American corporations.
American corporations buying European corporations ie; MF & Laverda
American corporations buying into Chinese corporations.

And still the *****ing goes on from a few here about the terrible performance and the disappearance of the well known names of some of the less well run corporations.

Massey Harris / MF bought up Australia's oldest and biggest farm machinery manufacturer in the 1950's, sucked up all the subsidies provided by the Australian governments, stripped the company of all it's assets, deliberately as in "deliberately" destroyed a museum of Australia's earliest farm machinery so there was to be no longer any record of Australia's 1800's farm technology that was decades ahead of North American farm technology and then closed down all the remaining manufacturing assets of that former Australian company.

John Deere did exactly the same to Australia's largest home grown tractor manufacturer in the 1970's , stripped it of assets, stacked the company books, sucked up every last cent of subsidies offered by the governments, and then closed the entire tractor and machinery manufacturing assets down claiming it was not viable.
No way was the JD board and executive going to allow an Australian company to compete against it's north American operations.
Nope, force those foreigners to import everything from their own operations in north America.

There are a number of other instances of the North American corporation's predatory behavior here in Australia and no doubt many, many instances could be recounted from any number of other countries around the world.

So a lot of us outside of North America will be watching with great amusement the screeching and *****ing and howls of outrage that will start up, now that the mighty US dollar is on the skids, as the Chinese and Indian corporations move in and start buying up the rather complacent and for some, arrogant North American corporations.

What goes around, eventually comes around.

There are many posters on this thread and forum who are very aware of the situation and I must compliment them on their wider and more encompassing global outlook but there are some who seem to be totally out of touch with the real world and have this rather glorified view of the past which as far as they are concerned must stay in it's pristine form forever, providing of course that it does not affect any changes or improvements that they wish to make to their own comfortable life styles and particularly any challenges to their own nationalistic beliefs.

And if you want to check the early Australian farm machinery advances and the depredations of particularly MF in the 1950's 60's and 70's then use Search to find the "Push Button Combine" thread
 
#21 ·
Wow here we go again, Conner preaching the evils of Agco and MF. I love the comment about buying a Gleaner if it were painted like a Deere but not if it were painted like a Massey. That just shows a very high level of maturity! I dont think either of these will happen though. I have a feeling that some people would still complain if Agco changed there name to WFE, changed all products to White, and only concentrated on North America.
 
#22 ·
I think it has more to do with the poor dealership network than anything. However, I will say in my general area and through much of Illinois Masseys are pretty rare. So introducing the red Masseys in this area is almost like the launch of a completely new brand. It actually may be worse since those that recall the Massey products from the 60's and 70's are probably still pretty biased against the name. A brand becomes a brand for a reason. Painting a Gleaner green and slapping Deere on the side of it probably wouldn't sell any more or less of them. Likewise if you took a Deere and painted it red and put Massey on the side you would see a decline in those sales. A lot depends on history and geography.

I personally thought AGCO was heading in the right direction calling their products as "AGCO" and moving away from the old names from each brands heritage. CaseIH kind of melted the names together to keep everyone happy and with NH in the fold it has been run as it's own brand. It would be interesting to see how they would consolidate the CaseIh and NH brands together, but they aren't there yet. For me it has come down to trust. I don't trust anything AGCO says. 5 years ago they said the AGCO tractor was going to be the cornserstone brand for tractors, now it's gone. The reasoning is OK as they want to consolidate brands, but then they buy another company then proclaim to keep the brand as it has regional success. P&G, Monsanto and others have found a way to play the brand game, none of them have found sucess in killing brand names and they don't. The perception from the AGCO fans is they are trying to ram Massey down their throat, and quite frankly a lot of them aren't appreciating it.
 
#23 ·
I think stateline was right though. Nobody will ever be happy. It would not be finacially feasible at all to please everyone in the USA and keep ALL the brands alive (Allis, White, Hesston, New Idea, etc.) If Agco painted everything orange, all the Massey guys would be furious. Same if they painted everything WFE silver or whatever color.......someone would STILL complain. Much like Connor lol.
 
#25 ·
If AGCO does acquire Laverda it will be interesting to watch and see if they revisit past history and past technology.
As I posted some time ago in the Push Button Combine thread, when Deutz bought the combine division when AC was sold up, Deutz believed they were getting the still under wraps, experimental AC down front processor combine technology.
The processor was a down front version of the N series processors of the time with the MOG being discharged out to the left hand side.
The whole project was possibly heavily influenced by the success and popularity of the down front cylinder design of the Gleaner conventionals such as the L2's and the large potential of the rotary N series with their very high demonstrated capacities when they were actually up and running.

Deutz only found out after the final contracts were signed that for reasons unknown at the time, the design rights for new down front processor experimental combine were actually owned by AC's Industrial Division which was bought by Fiat of Italy who were also the owners of the Laverda brand.
Which really stung as one of the reasons I was given, by the head of Deutz's world sales division, for Deutz buying the AC combine division was to get access to that very same AC rotary down front combine technology.

Combine technology has moved on a long way from there and the down front processor would likely no longer be a consideration but sometimes you just can't even guess what is running through a few combine designer's minds when they are contemplating the possibly radical designs of combines perhaps a decade into the future, long before those designs will ever hit the fields.
 
#29 ·
Last spring I drove a new Deere 8345RT that a neighbor had purchased. A few weeks ago I drove a new fully loaded 8600 series Massey. I can honestly say that both tractors were equal in most every way, if anything the Massey seemed slightly quieter. Both are very good tractors. I really think that if people will be objective they will come to the conclusion that the Massey is a high quality machine. Will it ever overtake Deere and CaseIH in sales? Obviously not but the fact is that the new Massey and Challenger tractors are nothing to be ashamed of.
 
#30 · (Edited)
Last spring I drove a new Deere 8345RT that a neighbor had purchased. A few weeks ago I drove a new fully loaded 8600 series Massey. I can honestly say that both tractors were equal in most every way, if anything the Massey seemed slightly quieter. Both are very good tractors. I really think that if people will be objective they will come to the conclusion that the Massey is a high quality machine. Will it ever overtake Deere and CaseIH in sales? Obviously not but the fact is that the new Massey and Challenger tractors are nothing to be ashamed of.
I have a couple friends who have both been around the new AGCO/Massey tractors. They are both diehard green guys and both will admit that these new AGCO/Massey tractors may be as good as or possibly even better than there green ones. However, they both said they would probably never buy one. Why? Because Deere has all their guidance and monitoring systems comingled between all their products. They know all they have to do is plug their planter monitor into the back of the tractor and the GS system will take over controlling both tractor and planter functions. I think this is only going to get better or worse as you see Case starting to do the same things with their AFS controllers/monitors. Having a rainbow shed will not be as convenient as one that is all one color. Companies are doing what they can to make it more difficult to have a rainbow shed. I'm not saying its right or wrong, but its the way it seems to be heading. If you want to compete with Deere and Case you will need a full line of equipment, not just one or two good products. The problem is AGCo is behind both Case and Deere on their precision farming hardware and software.
 
#31 ·
LG, you are absolutely correct. I have two neighbors, one who runs mostly Cat and another who is all green. The man with the green has a lot fewer headaches than the other one who is constantly scrambling to deal with the problems that come with attempting to intermix different systems. Unfortunately, AGCO is behind in the technology race and I doubt if their dealers (who don't have the money or customer base) can compete.
 
#36 ·
Agco was the first to have the ISO11783 monitor in their tractors, clear back in 2006, Deere and Case are just getting that technology in their machines. Agco is using TopCon as a factory brand technology product and it is available in all of their products. We sell Trimble which is a color blind product, and is being used by CNH as their factory brand, and who did Deere buy to get what they have?
Most "aftermarket" technology products will communicate with the factory products of today, so my take on Deere and CNH being ahead on technology is B S all the way over AGCO.
 
#37 ·
Deere purchased a sugercane harvestor that was a well known name a few years ago, they purchased a tree harvesting company the same way, and there are many more, so what happened to those original brand names and dealers that sold them?

CNH has purchased many companies over the years also and the same as above happened.

So why all the bad press when Agco does it? I know they probably should have just integrated the products into one or two name brands at that time but it didn't happen then but is happening now.

Nothing we average joe's out here can do but just do what we think is best for our lively hoods and go on.

I sure hope this dead horse stops getting beat, it is very tiring to read all this BS over and over again and again.
 
#40 ·
CNH has purchased many companies over the years also and the same as above happened. So why all the bad press when Agco does it?
Very true. Literally every other farm equipment manufacturer has done what Agco is doing at one point or another. The only people really complaining right now are die hard AC fans. Lets face it orange tractors are gone forever unless you buy a Kubota. Agco definitely still has some quality products to offer though......
 
#38 ·
2006 and on Agco has done a **** of a lot as far as technology. But before then where were they at? Always years behind unfortunately. It took then until last year to finally get their tractor cabs and control console up to date, only 14 years after Deere laid down the blueprint and everyone else has followed suit with since. But Agco was the last. Even headland and engine management systems in tractors, where has Agco been on that? Pretty much the last. It's always a lot of little things that Agco can't seem to keep up on. Then finally they have a huge stride for once second and then they're back to where they were, trying to play catch up as usual. It's not hard to see that they're already falling behind again even after the intro of their new tractors, the S7 series and so on.

Gleaner combines are still wearing the same body they were when the R-50's and 40's came out in 1987...Agco can't even keep up on styling. And it's very sad to say that we haven't heard anything exciting about White planters in a long time. I see a lot of adds from Deere, Kinze, Case, etc about updates and new lines. What have we heard from White since the intro of the 8000 series nearly 10 years ago?

Agco has really been doing a lot. Like I said they've spent a lot of money buying up companies only to throw them away. And that is a lot of money they could've been using on R&D to keep up with the times and the competition.
 
#39 · (Edited)
Even headland and engine management systems in tractors, where has Agco been on that?
How far back do we really need to look? The manual from my 1993 Massey talks about headland management. My tractor is not equipped with the feature, so I cannot speak to how well it works, but it was certainly available. 1993 is, coincidentally, the year Agco purchased the rights to distribute Massey in NA.

Gleaner combines are still wearing the same body they were when the R-50's and 40's came out in 1987
To be fair, Case IH was still rocking the same 1400 series combine style up until a couple of years ago. Deeres have not changed significantly since 1989 either, other than some small changes to the rear end for adapting to the new rotor design. Also, Gleaner has the A series if you want a completely different design.
 
#43 ·
You expect me the believe some third hand info report from an Agco exec? Sales have to be good. The NA row crop economy may be the best it has ever been. Selling ag equipment today should be as easy as selling lemonade in the desert. I dont see the Massey revolution in the corn belt. Plenty of New CaseIH and JD moving off the lots in record numbers in these parts. Local massey dealer has one larger FWA and 3 compacts that have been sitting there since August.
 
#44 ·
I never said that they are selling like hot cakes just saying that the fact that there are no more orange tractors didn,t upset the apple cart.If they cut the price of tractors by fifty percent and offered 0% money for ten years in North America it wouldn,t matter,people would still buy Deere.
 
#45 ·
I can't say that the change over has effected the dealer here where I live. they are a top notch dealer and all the locals here know it. they where oliver, AC, agco and now mf. where else can you go and get parts on a sunday in a emergancy....Lets face it "all MF ever had was tinker toys other than there combines (ex.760and 860s" as my grandfather puts it. but why would you take a big money making brand such as hesston and slap MF on it. hesston is a house hold name in hay equipment the same as deere and caseIH in everything else......I mean come on the only reason people are still buying MF/AGCO is because they know deep down it is not a MF its something better.

matt
 
#46 ·
I can't say that the change over has effected the dealer here where I live. they are a top notch dealer and all the locals here know it. they where oliver, AC, agco and now mf. where else can you go and get parts on a sunday in a emergancy....Lets face it "all MF ever had was tinker toys other than there combines (ex.760and 860s" as my grandfather puts it. but why would you take a big money making brand such as hesston and slap MF on it. hesston is a house hold name in hay equipment the same as deere and caseIH in everything else......I mean come on the only reason people are still buying MF/AGCO is because they know deep down it is not a MF its something better.

matt
I got mad yesterday seeing a Hesston centerline baler rebadged as a Challenger. Same for the swathers.

My dad had a 8450 CIH round baler, a rebadged Hesston. Best model of baler he'd ever seen in his life, thought it was far far superior to a Deere 430 or 435. From people I've talked to, they aren't as high capacity as some Deere machines, but far less maintenance and problems and power requirements. Hesston is something that should have stayed separate.

Bruce
 
#48 ·
we only have a few things made by the companies that agco aquired.. but what i really dont like about agco is getting rid of the hesston line and starting to make them a massey when they leave sunflower disc there own colors... hesston was a way way way bigger company then sunflower was ... used to be alot of hesston hay equipment around here .. and now its all new holland deere or vermeer........i did not know vermeer made john deeres hay equipment... is this the only company that makes some of there products?... didnt hesston used to make the cnh big square baleres?
 
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