Norsk Hydro’s agri-business operation Hydro Agri will take the name Yara upon the demerger and stock exchange listing planned for March 25, 2004. At the same time the new company, which will have its headquarters in Oslo, will keep the rights to the “Viking ship” for use in their new logo and marketing. Hydro Agri is the world’s leading fertilizer company and the only global player in the fertilizer industry. The company is present in approximately 50 countries, including six South East Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – and sold 22 million tons of fertilizers to customers in 130 countries in 2002. The listing of Yara as a separate company is a move to position the group’s Agri business area for further growth. “We have found a short name built on our traditions with a strong affiliation to our activities. The name will carry our message all over the world in a distinct way. In addition we see great possibilities to link our new name to our cultural heritage with the strongly recognized symbol which we will bring with us from Hydro,” says Thorleif Enger, who has led Hydro Agri since 1999 and will continue to lead the new company after the separation from Hydro and listing. Yara is a designed name with its starting point in both the Norse lingual heritage and in the old Germanic rune alphabet. In the Norse language Jar creates the prefix jardar, often tied to cultivated land: Jara is moreover the twelfth character in the rune alphabet and means “the year”, often signifies a good year with good harvest. The word Jara is also the origin to “year” in English and “Jahr” in German. “To make it easier to pronounce the word jara in a consistent way in multiple languages, we have chosen the prefix Y that incidentally relates to the English word “Yield”, which is the core message in our business,” says Enger. Yara will continue with the Viking ship symbol in the new logo and marketing. Different versions of the Viking ship have been the core element in Hydro’s logo since the company’s inception in 1910, and today’s version has been in use for the last 20 years. The Viking ship is a well recognized brand for Hydro’s fertilizer products all over the world.
