Neogen to acquire U.S. rights to cattle pour-on insecticide

Neogen to acquire U.S. rights to cattle pour-on insecticide

Lansing-based food safety company Neogen Corp.  is poised to acquire an industry-leading beef cattle insecticide.

On Thursday morning, Neogen (Nasdaq: NEOG) announced that it plans to acquire the U.S. rights to StandGuard Pour-on, which combats horn fly and lice within domestic beef cattle. StandGuard Pour-on belongs to global animal products supplier Elanco Animal Health, Inc., which has proposed a $7.6 billion acquisition of Bayer Animal Health GmbH.

The Federal Trade Commission has stepped in to order Elanco and Bayer to divest from three animal products as they prove to be anti-competitive in their respective markets.

StandGuard Pour-on was one of the products Elanco was forced to divest from. The FTC said in a press release that the market for cattle pour-on insecticides is already highly concentrated and that the proposed acquisition would allow Elanco, the third highest competitor in that category, to acquire the market leader, which is Bayer.

Now, the rights to the product will fall to Neogen, which entered the agricultural insecticide market in 2014 when it acquired Chem-Tech.

“Elanco’s divestiture of its StandGuard product is an unexpected opportunity that we could not pass on,” Neogen President and CEO John Adent said in a statement. 

“The product is a true bolt-on to complement our existing agricultural biosecurity infrastructure. This acquisition will provide Neogen immediate sales opportunities post-closing, along with both new registrations and access to the gamma-cyhalothrin active.”

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.