Topcon announces global Agriculture Group

Global headquarters of the new group is Turin, Italy, with regional North American headquarters in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, U.S. and regional APAC headquarters in Adelaide, Australia.

“With our recent acquisitions of Wachendorff Elektronik, Digi-Star, RDS Technology and NORAC we now have the most extensive offering of field and farm management solutions in our industry,” said Ray O’Connor, president and CEO of Topcon Positioning Group (TPG). “We will continue a strong focus on traditional field applications, but we now also have the sensors and software to provide comprehensive planning, process control, workflow monitoring and extensive reporting that will bring our customers the full advantages of connected farming with immediate positive effect on their productivity.”

The new global headquarters in Turin, Italy, is also a result of this added emphasis on connected farming. “Our telematics division — Tierra Telematics Design — has been located in Turin since 2008 and has had great success in both the construction and agricultural markets, particularly with important OEM clients,” said Ivan Di Federico, TPG Chief Strategy Officer and now also chairman of Topcon Agriculture. “It is our objective to bring IoT (Internet of Things) solutions into the ag business that will link all the mechanics of farming to provide a workflow automation framework necessary to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture.”

Fabio Isaia, the former Tierra CEO will now become CEO of Topcon Agriculture. “The new ag paradigm is moving towards the integration of different technologies to collect data from heterogeneous sources, which is exactly where we see our business going,” Isaia said. “Similar to other sectors, our mission will be to mine ‘big data’ to find information that will help customers to ‘harvest’ knowledge and make educated decisions to improve their workflows and business, with valuable ROI. Furthermore, we are planning to create an eco-system that will allow our customers and their partners to integrate seamlessly any data source and data model.”

Wachendorff Elektronik, a recognized global leader in the design and manufacturing of in-cab display for off-highway equipment located in Geisenheim, Germany, will expand its capabilities and become the primary manufacturing location for the entire Agriculture Group.

Albert Zahalka, who has been president of Topcon Precision Agriculture since 2010 and is now also COO of Topcon Agriculture, said, “Digi-Star has been a great addition to our company, and now as regional headquarters, will continue to supply its leading weighing, feed and farm management solutions, along with centralized sales and support for our distributors and OEM partners. We are very excited to have our North American regional headquarters located in its agricultural heartland.

“NORAC Systems, with its best-in-class boom height control systems,” Zahalka said, “and the intelligent measurement systems produced by RDS Technology will continue to mainly provide core technologies and solutions to the global OEM markets.”

Isaia said, “Together with Wachendorff, Digi-Star, NORAC and RDS, we can count on a vast and comprehensive products portfolio that will become smartly connected to the new Topcon Agriculture eco-system, to source information that’s the core of all augmented agricultural services we’ll offer to our customers.”

O’Connor said, “This new business model greatly broadens the scope of our investment in the global agricultural markets. It will re-center our operational structure to make a strong push into the growing European aftermarket and OEM business, while further developing our investment in the agricultural heartland of North America. It will create new efficiencies in R&D, engineering and manufacturing, while streamlining our abilities to continue to grow our other core businesses.”