Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Gavita Management Buyout: Hydroponics Shake‑Up After Miracle‑Gro Split

Transcript

Gavita Management Buyout: Hydroponics Shake‑Up After Miracle‑Gro Split · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to
• 0:01
  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  And I've got some breaking news. Do you remember a few weeks ago,
• 0:12
  maybe a month or so ago, we talked about how Miracle-Gro was selling off their hydroponic division.
• 0:20
  Their legal cannabis play, which was Hawthorne Horticulture.
• 0:23
  And Hawthorne Horticulture, during lockdown
• 0:27
  and just after lockdown bought up loads of hydroponic companies
• 0:31
  including botanicare general hydroponics
• 0:34
  gavita can fan and
• 0:38
  filters i think as well they bought them anyway and
• 0:41
  they said recently that they're going to be disbanding
• 0:44
  this until cannabis becomes federally legal as
• 0:48
  well as state legal and they were
• 0:51
  they were in talks with a new buyer and i said it was very
• 0:54
  intriguing because when you are in trucks to buy a
• 0:57
  company that big you normally have to declare it to the
• 1:00
  stock exchange if you are publicly listed so where
• 1:03
  were these where was this um company going to end up no one had said they were
• 1:06
  interested in buying hawthorn horticulture but today we found out that gavita
• 1:12
  at least is being bought out by the management so the upper management of gavita
• 1:18
  are going to be buying the company and this is quite common that the there's a management buyout.
• 1:23
  Often the managers see something in the business that they like and they've got the pounds to do it.
• 1:29
  There you know, the CEO and the CFO, this is not the guy in manufacturing who's
• 1:35
  sweeping up all the leftover LED lights. This is the top dogs.
• 1:40
  And it probably works for both partners because you could imagine Hawthorne and Miracle-Gro.
• 1:45
  They could give them shares in
• 1:48
  lieu of say a big bonus payment that they were due
• 1:51
  or a big or a big redundancy package
• 1:54
  they were perhaps due in dollars a big dollar
• 1:57
  amount and instead they could sort of persuade them to buy the company and the
• 2:05
  ongoing and take hold of the ongoing costs and things like this so that looks
• 2:10
  like what's happened so effective from the 30th of september so this has happened.
• 2:17
  The company previously known part of Hawthorne professional
• 2:20
  horticultural lighting business division microco is
• 2:23
  under new ownership so Mark Salvani
• 2:26
  is heading up as CEO and yeah
• 2:29
  interesting times ahead we talked about the
• 2:32
  issue with Osram and the patents infringements
• 2:36
  and things like this and potential court cases that
• 2:39
  were in the works so an interesting time for
• 2:43
  to be taken over ownership of Gavita and I would imagine that this sort of scheme
• 2:50
  where the management's buy it out is being offered to a lot of the Hawthorne
• 2:53
  companies to sort of take it or leave it sort of thing because it probably looks
• 2:58
  good on the balance sheets of Miracle-Gro and Hawthorne.
• 3:01
  So watch this space or imagine some of the other companies might go independent soon.
• 3:07
  Maybe not, maybe I've completely misread the situation.
• 3:10
  Update from you Trima, today we've had a really good day in manufacturing
• 3:14
  we've managed we've manufactured lots and lots of our biofungicide chytozan
• 3:18
  that's going off to customers here in the
• 3:20
  uk and ireland and spain but the
• 3:23
  really interesting bit today is that the auxin solution
• 3:27
  i talked about last week yes yesterday even
• 3:30
  has done really well so i managed to produce a 12
• 3:33
  and a half percent indole butric acid
• 3:36
  solution if that means anything to you that's an auxin a
• 3:39
  natural rooting hormone and plant hormone that's
• 3:43
  used in a number of different ways in horticulture and a
• 3:46
  12.5% solution is whoppingly high it's
• 3:50
  massive that would you know if you think of other auxin solutions
• 3:53
  like clonex that is that's 40
• 3:56
  times the concentration so i'm not sure
• 3:59
  there's a market for the actual product yet i know i've produced an amazing product
• 4:02
  we'll probably produce a solution a very high concentrated super
• 4:05
  concentrate solution and a gel that is
• 4:08
  nowhere near as concentrated but the way we've
• 4:11
  produced it is going to be solvent free which is amazing which
• 4:15
  means that we can use some really nice gelling agents perhaps
• 4:18
  a seaweed based one or something like this so watch
• 4:21
  this space hoping to get out fairly soon i did
• 4:24
  last week i sort of made a resolution no more new products.
• 4:27
  Russell because all my money goes into
• 4:30
  launching new products rather than actually paying bills
• 4:33
  and pay for my house and things like that
• 4:36
  and holidays and cars and things like that and nice
• 4:39
  treats but this one's just too good a
• 4:42
  product to miss and there's options for
• 4:45
  other sort of products we could do as well so i'm looking at a jasmonic acid
• 4:50
  product as well that's solvent free which is the key area where we work in utreema
• 4:55
  we're getting things into solution that shouldn't normally be in solution is
• 4:59
  our expertise if you look at gold leaf getting every nutrient into solution salicylic acid,
• 5:05
  chitosan what else we've got loads and loads oh well like our slug product liquid ferric,
• 5:12
  phosphate basically doing what shouldn't be done chemically wise
• 5:16
  that's our expertise and no different with this auxin product
• 5:18
  and potentially a jasmonic acid product which had
• 5:22
  a lot will have a lot of uses in hydroponics i
• 5:25
  would say the jasmonic acid one probably has more uses than the auxin one
• 5:28
  if you're interested in trialing a new amazing auxin
• 5:31
  product then please do get in touch and i'll send some samples out and yeah
• 5:35
  let me know what you think it should be interesting that's been 100 products
• 5:39
  daily for today just letting you give me an update on gavita and where things
• 5:41
  are heading with the hawthorn company and a bit of an update on our exciting
• 5:45
  new products thank you very much for listening until next time goodbye.