Romanian biotech company looks to South Dakota for U.S. expansion

Gary Lamb has spent a lifetime in agriculture in northeast South Dakota and knows a game-changing product when he sees one.

“I’m very impressed,” Lamb said. “One farmer told me recently after putting this on oats and corn that it’s his best crop he has ever had. It increased his oats yield tremendously, and he noted the corn plant is healthier and stronger and stayed green when it dried out. Other fields turned brown,  but this one just thrived.”

Lamb’s career has included ag-related entrepreneurship, with businesses in commodities, livestock and agronomy. He since has sold them, but in the process, a business broker became a connection to Norofert Group.

Based in Romania and founded by Vlad Popescu, the company reached out to Lamb about becoming a partner in its U.S. expansion. Norofert has more than 1.5 million acres — more than 30 percent of Romania’s acres — using its products per year.

“They’ve been in business 25 years and have a human-grade lab in Romania where scientists and lab technicians are helping formulate and produce more than 60 products,” Lamb explained. “These are very, very rare here. And now we’re beginning to produce and distribute them from our base in South Dakota.”

Earlier this year, Norofert rented a warehouse, office and production space in Watertown and began making products designed to support various crop-related needs.

The biological products are designed to address a variety of soil and plant-based nutrient problems, including products using more than 40 strains of bacteria – more than twice what most competitive products use.

Norofert products include biological fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, soil health, seed treatments and more, mostly focused on drought tolerance, and the company has new products in development, including ones that rejuvenate or “wake up” land after it has died from too much salt chemical or fertilizer runoff.

“I’ve probably had 80 different trials out this year, from Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, and very few are even neutral. Most all of them have shown a very positive result,” Lamb said.

“It’s pretty incredible the difference it’s made for farmers who are looking for ways to lower the cost of inputs without losing yield. This company has come up with some very good recipes, and it keeps developing more, while offering some of the lowest prices in the industry.”

Norofert is looking at hiring eight to 10 people as the company scales in the U.S., “and we’re looking for dealers as well as district sales managers in the five-state area of South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota,” Lamb said.

“Then we’ll be expanding to places like Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and beyond.”

Norofert represents an exciting opportunity to grow the ag biotech base in South Dakota, said Joni Ekstrum, executive director of South Dakota Biotech.

“Gary Lamb is a trusted and credible voice in the ag community, so it’s key that he is leading this international expansion,” she said. “The early results are absolutely impressive, and we see a lot of benefit for this company to be utilizing South Dakota as its home base as it grows throughout the U.S.”

There are a number of advantages to locating in the state, Lamb said.

“South Dakota itself is very diverse, so we can be addressing drought in the west and excess moisture in the east, for example, which we did this year,” he said.

“And geographically, Watertown is on I-29, Sioux Falls is on I-29 and I-90, so we’re looking at ease of transport to get to our dealers, and we’re surrounded by farmers here to understand the return on investment these products can provide — lower cost of production with efficient products to make your soil healthier for your crops.”

And then there’s this bonus: When Norofert committed to the U.S. operation in Watertown, company leaders didn’t even know about the Research Park at SDSU and its recently enhanced capabilities to support bioprocessing research and development.

“South Dakota is very fortunate to have this available. My partner from Romania visited and lit up,” Lamb said. “He said there may be only four production sites like this in the whole U.S., and we have this state-of-the-art one just down the road. So we’re looking at producing products in the lab, which would help us even more with the logistics of getting our product fresher and having it all right here. It’s amazing that this exists here.”

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