Message from the Leadership Team 2024
Premier
For the fourth consecutive year, we have had to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of a constantly evolving economic environment. The diversity of our industries, the strength of our global team and our ability to have a strong global presence while maintaining deep local roots were key factors in our ability to cope.
Our thorough strategic planning has allowed us to remain firmly focused on our long-term objectives, while balancing out and meeting short-term commitments with agility.
Premier
This relative stability in our revenues reflects our ongoing commitment to protecting our position and consolidating our foundation for future growth through these difficult economic conditions. This operational discipline, combined with the control of the technological platforms behind our products and services as well as our long-term relationships in the market, positions us strongly for the future.
— Our thorough strategic planning has allowed us to remain firmly focused on our long-term objectives, while balancing out and meeting short-term commitments with agility. —
Impact of external factors
This year’s financial results were significantly affected by rising interest rates, which influenced consumer buying habits and led our clients to invest less, moderating demand for our products and services. At the same time, higher financing costs impacted our cost structure and, by extension, our profit margins.
. In response to these economic conditions, we adjusted our financial and operational strategies, enabling us to maintain a leading position in our markets and to retain, and even grow, market shares despite the contraction of certain sectors.
Premier
A rainy, cold spring, followed by a relatively wet summer for the second year running, greatly reduced consumer engagement in gardening activities and disrupted the peat moss harvesting cycle. The combination of these two situations had a strong negative impact on our sales volumes and cost structure.
These events, which had a widespread impact on the entire industry in North America, not only affected the consumer market, but also had a domino effect on the greenhouse growers’ professional market. The mild winter of 2023–2024 also significantly influenced market dynamics for some seasonal products, especially in our winter defense line.
— In response to these economic conditions, we adjusted our financial and operational strategies, enabling us to maintain a leading position in our markets. —
Investing to secure the long term
Our teams saw these challenges as opportunities to generate lasting, profitable transformations. As such, we maintained our strategic investment program begun in 2021, aligned with our VISION 2027 strategic plan. These investments are aimed at improving our overall efficiency and proximity to our clients, accelerating our digital transformation and increasing our manufacturing capacity to support our growth and improve delivery times. By strengthening our global competitiveness, we are laying the foundation to gain market share and consolidate our leadership in our industries.
During fiscal 2023, we have amplified our local presence while extending our global reach through substantial investments in fixed assets totalling $111 million. Close to $75 million of that amount went toward increasing our manufacturing capacity, reducing our manufacturing costs, or supporting the launch of new commercial offers. This intensification of our investments in 2023 was supported by fixed assets acquisitions totalling $47 million during fiscal year 2024, of which 40% was for projects in Canada and 30% for projects in the United States.
In the U.S. market in particular, our expansion was marked by the opening, in March 2024, of Premier
— This intensification of our investments in 2023 was supported by fixed assets acquisitions totalling $47 million during fiscal year 2024. —
This expansion comes in addition to two other major U.S. projects undertaken by Premier
Both projects, as well as the one for Premier
As we embark on our second century, our teams have set the stage to leverage the full potential of our products and services. Our rigorous strategic planning and innovation processes help us accurately identify opportunities and remain resolutely focused on seizing them.
The foundations we have laid will drive our continued profitable growth for years to come. With a solid history and these strong new foundations, Premier
— These investments to increase our manufacturing capacity also optimize our operational efficiency and lay the groundwork for launching new products in the coming fiscal years. —
Strategic acquisitions for sustained growth
Acquisitions remain instrumental in our development strategy. Not only do they bring us geographically closer to our clients and enable us to integrate cutting-edge technology platforms or strong product brands, they are also a real driver of organic growth. That is because they amplify the presence and reach of our existing brands, commercial offers, and client relationships.
Over the past fiscal year, we analyzed a number of businesses in light of our selection criteria, which favour winning companies with a strong market position and a leadership team eager to go the extra mile and build long-term relationships with clients.
In our selection process, we systematically look for at least one of the following strategic criteria: integration or acceleration of the development of a new technological platform; addition of product range, services or brands with strong international growth potential; access to a sales territory or market sector; or consolidation of both our supply chain and market access, — thereby increasing our business footprint and our ability to support clients.
— Over the past fiscal year, we analyzed a number of businesses in light of our selection criteria. —
Although we looked at a fair number of companies during the fiscal year, valuation expectations are still high and often incompatible with our financial return requirements. Two transactions we worked on in 2024 were completed at the very beginning of fiscal year 2025.
The first was Premier
The second transaction saw Premier
Meaningful partnerships
It has always been core to Premier
In an interconnected world, the supply chain is not just about buying and delivering raw materials, components, or finished products — it is pivotal to a company’s operations. We understand and value this and are constantly working to move our partnerships with suppliers from a tactical level to a strategic relationship.
— In the global context of recent years, it has become all the more important to maintain strong partnerships. —
Our partnerships are the result of careful selection and a mutual commitment to excellence, innovation, and sustainability. Each partner is chosen not only for the quality of its products, but also for its ability to align with our Culture and strategic objectives. Together, we form a resilient network that responds with agility to changing market dynamics and needs.
Competitive advantage
A robust supply chain means greater operational efficiency. It sharpens our logistics and operational efficiency while enhancing our competitive advantage. Accurate and efficient supply chain management has a direct impact on delivery times and finished product quality, increasing our responsiveness to fluctuating market demands. A well-orchestrated supply chain does not just meet expectations, it anticipates them..
Building on transparency
Transparency is central to our values and must be reflected in our partnerships through open and honest communication and clear expectations for how the parties will collaborate. By being upfront about our objectives and needs, we give our suppliers the visibility they need to proactively adjust their actions and align their strategies with ours. This helps sync our needs with the ability of our suppliers to support them, making us more agile and responsive in constantly changing markets.
In it for the long haul
A stable supply chain is critical to the continuity and quality of our services. That is why we seek out and foster long-term relationships with our supply chain partners. Once again, our approach is rooted in long-term viability and stability, not just in arbitrary criteria. We are proud to say that we have relationships stretching back decades with many of our supply chain partners.
— Our partnerships are the result of careful selection and a mutual commitment to excellence, innovation, and sustainability. —
A vision in motion
Strategic planning has been core to our business model for more than 30 years. It is a fundamental process that unites our teams, channels their talent and ambitions, and fuels our growth.
The intent behind such focused effort is to identify the opportunities and challenges ahead and determine how to tackle them in a thorough, structured and disciplined way to have control over our destiny. The result is a shared vision that guides our actions, based on carefully developed objectives and strategies. This ensures profitable, sustainable growth over time and enables us to balance our short-, medium-, and long-term objectives.
Throughout the process, we are constantly exploring new ways to encourage all-encompassing strategic thinking, rich and inclusive conversations, and immersive collaboration. The value of our approach lies as much in the process and its consistency as in the unity and agility it brings to our teams. Ultimately, the process is far more valuable than the plan itself.
— The intent behind such focused effort is to identify the opportunities and challenges ahead and determine how to tackle them in a thorough, structured and disciplined way to have control over our destiny. —
VISION 2027: setting the pace as we grow forward
VISION 2027 deployment, which began two years ago, carries forward the velocity from previous strategic plans. The main objective is to ensure, through turbulent times, that our actions are relevant and consistent both inside and outside the organization. More than 500 team members were involved in numerous forums and conversations to define our objectives and strategies for the coming years. The result is a solid and inspiring plan for the future, which is the fruit of thousands of hours of conversations and challenges fuelled by data and facts on various topics, combined with our team members’ experience, expertise, and business intuition.
In addition to in-person interactions, we extended the conversation to over 1 000 team members across all our home bases via an online collaborative platform. This extensive process allowed us to transform words, numbers, ideas, and ambitions into concrete strategies and objectives.
Looking toward 2027, our strategic plan is built around several well-defined and complementary objectives. Our commitment to delivering value to our clients is central to our strategies and guides our decisions and actions.
Exploring new business models and keeping on innovating our processes and tools are key to our future development. At the same time, our commitment to sustainability and to the continuous improvement of the Team Member Experience continues to guide our intentional approach to initiatives we have always pursued intuitively.
In addition, our glocal presence requires strong strategic alignment for our teams around the world. This framework ensures consistent actions across Premier Tech as a whole, providing our teams with both autonomy and alignment while fostering the intrapreneurial spirit that drives our company culture.
— Our glocal presence requires strong strategic alignment for our teams around the world. —
Achieving our vision through key strategies
By fully integrating these multiple facets, we not only monitor market developments, we anticipate them and seek to shape them. To achieve our objectives and translate them into tangible results, we have identified and implemented strategies specific to VISION 2027, enabling us to strengthen our competitiveness and relevance across our various markets.
Sustainability and beyond
Our sustainability strategy is structured around a dynamic collaboration between horizontal teams, spanning our various business groups in order to speed up our progress and be agile in learning from each other. This ensures that our actions are guided by company-wide interactions and are fully aligned with our intent.
Through a maturity analysis of our operational practices across all our groups, we have identified the key elements underlying our commitment as well as our past, present, and future actions. A concrete action plan specific to each group, targeting the priority impact areas in our approach, was drawn up in collaboration with the sustainability horizontal team.
By learning from each other’s realities, we can develop cross-disciplinary skills and expertise and create tools that meet the concrete needs of our business groups.
Investing in our teams
In our view, team member development is a shared responsibility where both the organization and individual team members play a role.
To facilitate such engagement and make sure that team members take an active part in their own development, we have been investing for many years in training programs and tools to help them reach their potential while strengthening our collective expertise. For example, since 2015, the University of Premier
As part of VISION 2027 strategic plan, UPT is focusing on four key areas: talent visibility to optimize each person’s skills, knowledge management to encourage the sharing and continuity of expertise, career opportunities, as well as team member empowerment to promote autonomy within the team.
Over the past fiscal year, the company continued to support training and development, investing nearly $6.75 million. As a result, team members worldwide spent more than 104 000 hours training in the UPT ecosystem during the year.
Innovative offers
For more than 30 years, Innovation, Research and Development has been driving Premier
It is in this spirit that we are accelerating strategies we believe will transform and have a strong impact on the industries in which we operate. These strategies involve new business models and innovative business offers aligned with our goal of diversifying the nature and origin of our revenues. Over the past two years, our teams have worked on multiple projects, the first of which are expected to be launched in the next fiscal year.
We are also ramping up our efforts in artificial intelligence. At the start of fiscal year 2025, we developed a strategic partnership with Hectiq.AI, of which we became a minority shareholder. This is in addition to our partnership with the start-up Extend AI, which was announced in 2022.
These efforts reflect our deep commitment to staying on the cutting edge of technologies relevant to our industries, anticipating our clients’ future requirements to strengthen our position as a market leader.
Fiscal year 2025 will see the beginning of a new strategic planning cycle that will lead, over the next 18 months, to the development of VISION 2031. This approach where strategic plans overlap each other drives us forward and is key to ensuring Premier
Building the future together
Year after year, team members are a fundamental pillar of Premier
Together, we celebrated turning 100 years young in 2023, a milestone year for all Premier
Thanks to the determination and collaboration of every member of our team and the trust of our partners and clients, we are reaffirming our commitment to making a difference. New opportunities lie ahead, and with them the promise of continuing to feed, protect, and improve our world.
— Leadership Team
*This story is from the Premier Tech Report 2024.
