The objective of this alliance is to gain
synergies and offer a more complete and higher value services at the national
and international levels
Labcolor (COEXPHAL laboratory) and AGQ Labs
have reached a collaboration agreement that will expand and complement the
services that both currently offer. The alliance between Labcolor and AGQ Labs
will improve the competitiveness of both centers, acting as a large group that
offers a wider range of services and will give tailored advice to clients from
all over the world.
The agreement was carried out by the manager of
the Association of Organizations of Producers of Fruits and Vegetables of
AlmerÃa, Coexphal, Luis Miguel Fernández, and the president of the technology
group AGQ Labs, Estanislao MartÃnez.
From this moment, Labcolor is integrated as a
partner in the network of laboratories of AGQ Labs. According to sources of
both entities, the objective is to gain
in synergies and offer a more complete and higher value services offer in Spain
and in the 25 countries where AGQ Labs is present.
For Estanislao MartÃnez, Labcolor contributes to the analytical offer of AGQ Labs in Spain its
entire range of phytopathological tests, in addition to its long experience and
knowledge in the field of vegetables. This laboratory was a pioneer in Spain in
the analysis of pesticide residues, and its first director, Mariano Contreras,
we learned all those who then implement these analyzes. Therefore, this
alliance is a pride for us.
On the other hand, Luis Miguel Fernandez has
valued very positively the power to have
a technological platform such as AGQ Labs, with a presence in more than 20
countries, and laboratories in points as interesting for our partners as the
United States. On the other hand, thanks to the wide range of environmental,
agronomic and food quality analysis with AGQ Labs, the service that we will be
able to transfer to our producers and associated trading companies will be much
more complete.
AGQ Labs will provide Labcolor with the work in
different areas that are relevant to the fruit and vegetable sector, such as
Agronomy services, where it has more than 25 years of experience, Monitoring
and Nutritional Control of crops to know and evaluate the nutritional needs of
the plant and adapt the contributions of water and nutrients according to the
real demand, where AGQ Labs currently manages 2 million hectares worldwide.
Another strong point of AGQ Labs are the environmental controls.
For its part, Labcolor will make available to
AGQ Labs its experience in specific areas where it has achieved major and
important achievements such as Phytopathology, a service that currently does
not have the Sevillian laboratory integrated. The Department of Phytopathology
of Labcolor has a great experience in diagnosis and identification of
phytopathogenic organisms to avoid damages that diseases and plagues can cause
in horticultural crops and their products, in seeds, seedbeds, crops in
production, postharvest products, water of irrigation, soil, etc.
AGQ Labs
AGQ Labs is a technological center that
develops its activity in the agri-food, environmental and mining sectors. It
has laboratories in Spain, Morocco, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico
and the United States, as well as subsidiaries with logistics centers and
technical offices in Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa, Portugal and
Italy. Its network of laboratories analyzed more than 500,000 samples last
year, highlighting pesticide residue analysis, agronomic analysis (soils, soil
solutions and foliar), and environmental analyzes (water, contaminated soil,
waste, etc.). AGQ Labs has combined in its business model the technology of its
laboratories with the specialization and knowledge of its professionals in the
different business areas, thus providing highly valued specialized advice.
Altogether, there are more than 700 professionals that make up the AGQ Labs
staff.
COEXPHAL &
Labcolor
COEXPHAL, founded in 1977, brings together 97
producers, marketers of fruit and vegetables and the ornamental sector. In the
last campaign its associates sold 2,194,268 tons belonging to 9,500 farmers
whose production is cultivated in 31,800 hectares, which employ 60,000 people
from more than 150 different nationalities.
Labcolor, the laboratory of COEXPHAL, was
created in 1988 as an instrument of the export sector aimed at improving
marketing in the markets. In response to the demands of the sector, Labcolor
has been incorporating different areas of work in order to cover the analytical
and advisory needs. At present, it has the Departments of Residues and
Pollutants, Plant Pathology, Production, Agronomy and Quality.
