By ANN HINCH
Associate Editor

CAMDEN, Ind. — The Select Seed Hybrids plant that greets drivers on the edge of this small Indiana town, abutting the “Welcome to Camden” sign, is planned to remain right where it is even after being bought out by GROWMARK, Inc.
The Bloomington, Ill.-based agricultural cooperative was scheduled to close on its purchase of Select this past weekend. The announcement to media and the public was made two weeks ago, around the same time Select General Manager Kevin Eggerling mailed a letter to his company’s customers.

“As part of the GROWMARK family of brands, Select Seed will have access to an even broader range of products and services,” he wrote, in part, “all with the level of quality and service you’ve come to expect from Select Seed.”
While GROWMARK is buying Select entirely – the rights to the company name, buildings, land and customer base – Eggerling said, “We wanted to make sure (the acquisition) wasn’t going to change a lot.”

What this will give Select, he hopes, is additional capital and resources to improve facilities and expand production. Right now, Select tests and sells corn seed to about 600-700 customers through approximately 100 dealerships in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan, but Eggerling said thanks to GROWMARK it will be able to add soy, wheat and perhaps other types of seeds to his company’s portfolio.

Eggerling said it was his and his father, Art Eggerling’s (the company president), idea to approach GROWMARK about the sale, which they did through a third party. “We didn’t want to go with a multinational type” such as Monsanto or Dow, Kevin Eggerling explained, because Select wanted to add products and technology to its lineup – but didn’t want to change its own brand or corn seed.

Select already had a relationship with the co-op. “GROWMARK was actually Select Seed’s number-one customer as far as production,” explained Ron Milby, GROWMARK Seed Division manager.

“We work with a lot of production companies, (and) our northeast (southern Michigan) businesses just really like working with Select Seed for some reason.”
In 1942, the late Herold Eggerling began working with hybrid corn, then developing inbred lines with Holden’s Foundation Seeds. Sons Art, Arlen and Don followed in his footsteps; in 1973, Kevin Eggerling said his father bought Soy Seed and changed the name a few years later to Select Seed. From customers in only a handful of Indiana counties 38 years ago, Select’s customer base has branched pretty widely.

Eggerling joined the company out of college nearly two decades ago. Until 2000 Select had its own corn breeding program, but made the decision then to stop and put money instead into germplasm testing and evaluation of other corn seeds for its customers. Select now has about 100 such test sites.
“It’s just hard to compete on the breeding side,” he said.

Part of going to GROWMARK was hope to find a way to “saturate” Select’s current market area with more diverse products, rather than immediately branching out further geographically, Eggerling added. This should also help Select give its customers better prices.

Milby said the first order of business will be for GROWMARK to help Select maximize production at its Camden plant, for more efficiency, then help the smaller company capitalize on the resulting growth and the Select brand.
“It was third-generation-owned and it was very well run and profitable,” he said, on why GROWMARK bought in, adding in the past two years the co-op has looked at 10-15 companies but Select is only the second it has purchased. “The facilities are just top-drawer; they’re in really nice condition.”

As of last week, Select employed 25 people full-time, including salespeople. Milby said at press time that GROWMARK was planning to eliminate a couple of positions, one of whom is retiring anyway. He said the company does expect to increase Select’s sales staff, and the two Eggerlings will continue in their roles.
Select’s campus consists of the office building, a sorting facility, shop, two warehouses (the most recent constructed in 2000), two dryers, four grain bins, a shelling facility and storage for cobs, which it sells to The Andersons nearby.
Milby described GROWMARK as a $6 billion co-op dealing in seeds, fertilizer and energy, with a core sales area in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.
By comparison, he said Select is an $11 million-plus company. He and Eggerling both declined to disclose purchase price or terms of the sale.