Mahindra & Mahindra acquires 35% in Finnish firm, enters combine harvester biz

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) on Thursday announced its foray into the global combine harvester business by entering into a strategic partnership with Sampo Rosenlew, a combine harvester company based in Pori, Finland.

The Anand Mahindra led group acquired 35% equity in Sampo Rosenlew for 18 million euros. The deal is expected to close by April 2016.

Sampo Rosenlew is a European combine harvester company, renowned world-wide for mid-sized combine harvesters. In FY 2014-15 Sampo Rosenlew had standalone revenue of 93 million euro. The company is also a joint venture partner in a combine harvester company in Algeria which had revenues of 45 million euros in FY 2014 -15.

Pawan Goenka, executive director, M&M said, “Today, Mahindra is the world’s leading tractor company by volume, with an on-ground presence in India, USA, China and Japan, besides many other export markets. We are now putting in place a strategy to build a full product line of farm equipment that goes beyond tractors and with this we will compete globally in both advanced and developing markets”.

Sampo has presence in the European, North and South American countries and with M&M, the company will look to venture in the Asian markets. According to Pavan Goenka, Russian and its neighboring countries will be one of the major focus areas of Sampo Rosenlew in the days to come and Mahindra will look to utilise the research and development facilities of Sampo.

“Sampo Rosenlew will also develop a new range of combine harvesters for developing markets and for specialty crops. Mahindra and Sampo Rosenlew will jointly focus on the combine harvester business in Asia, Africa and Eurasian Economic Union countries,” said the company in a statement.

Mahindra India