Plant Impact growing fast

Fast growth, in more than one sense of the phrase, were the watchwords of crop productivity technology company Plant Impact on Monday as the company inked a licensing agreement with Japanese crop protection giant Arysta LifeScience.The deal makes official a provisional agreement announced in February 2009. Under the terms of the deal Plant Impact will grant an exclusive licence to Arysta to sell BugOil, Plant Impact's benign insect and mite control product. The licence agreement covers all market segments globally except the home & garden and animal health markets.Peter Blezard, chief executive officer of Plant Impact, told Sharecast the company is in negotiations with two other companies interested in marketing BugOil in the market segments not covered by the Arysta agreement.The Arysta deal, which will run for 20 years, will generate royalty payments for Plant Impact on sales generated by Arysta. The agreement also includes industry-standard sized milestone payments relating to the signing of the licensing agreement, the achievement of four regulatory milestones and the attainment of three sales targets.Blezard said the deal was a 'company changing' one for Plant Impact. 'We are a small company but we think big, and we now have a global footprint,' Blezard said.The company has a number of other technologies which have attracted interest from potential partners in the industry though Blezard said Arysta would be its 'partner of choice' in future tie-ups. 'Arysta has a massive team that drives regulation and registration issues. They have taken all of that off our desks. They are doing all the heavy lifting,' Blezard said.The Plant Impact CEO added that Aysta was also looking at using the BugOil platform technology in conjunction with its own technology. 'BugOil blends very well, and has improved the performance of their products,' Blezard stated.Looking beyond BugOil, Blezard told Sharecast that trials of InCa, its calcium delivery system for crops , are going very well. 'It's a silver bullet product. It works on everything. We are seeing tremendous yield increases,' Blezard said.Shareholders who got on board when the Arysta deal was first flagged back in February have enjoyed 'tremendous yield increases' of their own, with the share price quadrupling over the last four months. Today's news gave a further boost to the share price, pushing it to within 3p of its 52 week high of 48.5p.