Agripur is a Belgian player in the market for biosolutions and organic fertilisers.

Founded in 2019, the company is run by a group of innovative farmers whose aim is to anticipate the phasing out of chemical inputs by developing credible alternatives. One of these alternatives is nettle, a natural product with many virtues that have been known since ancient times.

The story begins with the research work of Professor Christian Marche, director of the Centre des Technologies Agronomiques (CTA) in Strée. He set up a long and fastidious selection programme based on more than 3,000 samples of wild nettles collected in Belgium. The programme resulted in the development of a cultivable, nutrient-rich variety of nettle.

In 2017, at the instigation of ITAB (France’s Institute for Organic Food and Agriculture), Europe recognised the nettle (Urtica dioica) for its fungicidal, insecticidal and acaricidal properties and paved the way for it to be marketed by recognising it as a “basic substance”.

This was all it took to convince Georges Beguin to start planting nettles in plots and so the adventure began. Working in the region of Sombreffe, the company’s founder and manager, Georges turned a barn into a production unit in order to develop a Walloon production chain for nettle manure. This production chain now includes farmers-producers of nettles and a unit that turns them into manure, as well as partners with a marketing network.