Rivulis: founded 1966 on Kibbutz Gvat as Plastro. Owned today by Temasek (78%) and Jain Irrigation (22%). 2,500 employees, 19 facilities, $450M valuation. The second-largest Israeli drip-irrigation platform and the underappreciated half of the Gulf agtech corridor.
Rivulis is the Israeli drip-irrigation company most people have never heard of — because the more famous one, Netafim, sits ten kilometers away on Kibbutz Hatzerim. Founded in 1966 on Kibbutz Gvat as Plastro. Owned today by Singapore's Temasek (78%) and India's Jain Irrigation (22%). Dual-headquartered in Singapore and Israel. 2,500+ employees. 19 manufacturing facilities. The second-largest drip-irrigation platform in the world — and the underappreciated half of the Israeli agtech corridor into the Gulf.
Every conversation about Israeli agritech in the UAE eventually names Netafim. Almost none of them name Rivulis. That is a marketing outcome, not an industrial one. On the ground — in Morocco, in the Emirates, in the actual farm-technology deployments that anchor the $10B UAE food-security allocation — Rivulis sits alongside Netafim across roughly the same customer base.
Here is the company most Gulf agtech coverage has been missing.
The Kibbutz Gvat origin
Rivulis began in 1966 as Plastro, a small kibbutz-manufactured plastic-goods enterprise on Kibbutz Gvat in northern Israel, per multiple corporate historical sources including Rivulis's own materials. Netafim was founded three years earlier, in 1965, on Kibbutz Hatzerim in the northern Negev.
The two companies came out of the same Israeli agricultural moment — the postwar kibbutz industrialization period — and quickly converged on the same commercial insight: drip irrigation, an Israeli-developed technology, was going to be the dominant water-efficient farming technique globally. Netafim moved first with more capital and more branding. Plastro moved slower but built comparable product quality.
By the early 2000s, Plastro was the world's second-largest drip-irrigation manufacturer behind Netafim. The order of magnitude between the two companies was closer than the market perception suggested.
The 20-year ownership sequence
Rivulis is a study in cross-border private-equity ownership. Six major transactions define its corporate history:
2007 — John Deere acquired a majority stake in Plastro Gvat, per Globes and Jewish Business News. This was John Deere's most ambitious attempt to enter the drip-irrigation category directly.
2014 — FIMI Opportunity Funds purchased Plastro from John Deere as part of a wider $60 million transaction, per AgFunder News. FIMI, founded and led by Ishay Davidi, is Israel's largest private equity fund by AUM — controlling stakes in roughly 30 companies at any given time.
2017 — Rebrand from Plastro to Rivulis, merger with Greek competitor Eurodrip. The merger consolidated the second-tier drip-irrigation platform globally and gave Rivulis a European market anchor.
2020 — Temasek acquired 85% for approximately $365 million, per Calcalist and Jewish Business News. FIMI received ~$240M for its 56% stake; Paine Schwartz Partners received ~$125M for its 29%; Jaya Hind Industries of India retained a 15% stake. Overall company valuation: ~$450 million, per Globes' comprehensive coverage.
2020 (December closing) — Full regulatory approval received, Temasek formally in control, Gregory Curl (Temasek President) becomes Chairman of the Board. Erez Meltzer — former President and CEO of Netafim, notable given the direct competitive history — appointed Vice Chairman.
June 2022 — Rivulis merged with Jain Irrigation Systems Limited of India, per Globes (June 22, 2022). Temasek's stake diluted to 78%; Jain Irrigation received 22% of the combined entity. Dual-headquartered in Singapore and Israel. Rivulis retains the corporate name.
That is a corporate-structure ladder that few Israeli industrial companies have matched. Founded on a socialist kibbutz. Sold to an American agricultural giant. Bought back by an Israeli PE fund. Merged with a Greek competitor. Absorbed by a Singaporean sovereign fund. Merged with an Indian family industrial group. Still operationally headquartered in Kibbutz Gvat.
Current corporate footprint
Per Rivulis's own current materials and third-party industry data:
- ~2,500 employees, roughly 400 in Israel
- 19 manufacturing facilities globally
- 3 R&D centers — Israel, California, Greece
- Multiple Design Centers across geographies
- 6,000+ business partners, 7,000+ direct growers
- Product brands — T-Tape, Ro-Drip, D5000 PC, Supertif, Eolos, Eurodrip Eolos, Eolos Compact
- Subsidiaries — Manna Irrigation (100%-owned Israeli precision-agriculture platform), plus regional operating subsidiaries in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile
- $250 million financing package led by HSBC, with State Bank of India, Rabobank, Bank Leumi, and First International Bank of Israel participating (per Who Profits corporate documentation)
The Gulf market presence includes documented deployments in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE per multiple industry trackers.
Why Temasek bought it
Temasek's Rivulis acquisition was part of a broader agri-food acceleration during the COVID-19 supply-chain disruption. Per Aditya Maheshwari's contemporaneous social-media post on the deal (relayed by AgFunder News): "Micro-irrigation is a proven, sustainability-promoting technology pioneered in Israel and tested over the decades in many countries across the world. However, adoption remains still in single digits, with huge runway for growth."
That single sentence captures the Temasek thesis. Global drip-irrigation penetration is well under 10% of arable land. The addressable expansion runway is 5-10x. Israeli technology leads the category. Rivulis was available at ~$450M in a market where Netafim had priced at $1.9B two years earlier. The relative-value math was straightforward.
Temasek runs a broader agrifoodtech portfolio: Bayer partnership on Unfold (vertical-farm seed varieties), the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology & Research foodtech innovation center, and multiple Israeli and US portfolio companies. Rivulis is the drip-irrigation anchor of that portfolio.
The Netafim comparison
The industry structure is duopolistic. Netafim leads globally. Rivulis is the credible second option. Neither can be dismissed by serious agtech procurement.
| Company | HQ (kibbutz origin) | Founded | Recent valuation | Current owner | Employees | Manufacturing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netafim | Kibbutz Hatzerim (Negev) | 1965 | $1.9B (2018 sale to Mexichem/Orbia); $1.4B reported ongoing sale talks (Feb 2026) | Orbia (Mexichem) — potentially transitioning | ~4,300 | 17 factories |
| Rivulis | Kibbutz Gvat (Northern Israel) | 1966 as Plastro | $450M (Temasek 2020) | Temasek (78%) + Jain Irrigation (22%) | ~2,500 | 19 facilities |
Netafim runs roughly 2x Rivulis's employee count but roughly comparable manufacturing footprint. Rivulis's value-per-employee has risen faster than Netafim's since the Temasek ownership change. Both are export-oriented — the Israeli domestic market is a fraction of either company's revenue.
The Gulf position
Rivulis's Gulf presence is under-covered relative to its actual deployment footprint. Named installations per corporate documentation and industry sources:
- Morocco — significant deployments per Who Profits corporate tracking
- Saudi Arabia — major grower partnerships, particularly for date-palm and greenhouse produce
- UAE — Al Ain, Ras Al Khaimah, and Emirates Bio Farm build-outs alongside Netafim
- Egypt — historical operations in the Nile Delta continuing into the current expansion
That Gulf position pre-dates the Abraham Accords in Morocco and post-dates the Accords in the UAE. It runs alongside Netafim rather than competing head-on — the two companies typically deploy on adjacent parcels within the same broader agtech-park projects, offering redundancy and competing on service tier rather than fundamental product.
The Silal and IHC buyer architecture treats Netafim and Rivulis as effectively interchangeable at the specification level. Farm-level selection then comes down to service, warranty, local support, and personal relationships between distributors — none of which favor Netafim over Rivulis by any structural margin.
The Jain Irrigation angle
The 2022 merger with Jain Irrigation Systems added strategic depth. Jain is a family-controlled Indian industrial group with:
- Roughly $600M+ annual revenue at the time of the merger
- NaanDan Irrigation — an Israeli drip-irrigation subsidiary acquired by Jain in 2012
- Extensive Indian farm-partnership network — critical for India's ongoing agricultural modernization
- Production capacity across India, Africa, and Latin America
The Jain merger gave Rivulis Indian production capacity, an Indian distribution footprint, and access to Africa markets Jain had built. It also gave Rivulis the NaanDan brand back into the fold. NaanDan had left Israeli hands in the mid-2000s; the Jain merger returned Israeli control to that product line.
The combined Rivulis-Jain entity now has manufacturing footprint across four continents. That is scale that only Netafim historically matched.
Where Rivulis fits in the Accords corridor
Rivulis is one of the Israeli agritech companies inside the Sheikh Tahnoon buyer mesh — alongside Netafim, IDE Technologies, Watergen, Aleph Farms, and the alternative-protein cluster.
Unlike Netafim, Rivulis has a Singaporean sovereign-fund owner (Temasek) that operates in adjacent geopolitical space to Abu Dhabi's sovereign funds. That creates natural coordination pathways at the sovereign-buyer / sovereign-owner level — Temasek and Mubadala co-invest routinely; Temasek and ADIA hold overlapping global portfolio positions.
The commercial implication: when a UAE customer negotiates a Rivulis-scale deployment, it can be structured with Temasek-level sovereign coordination that a Netafim procurement (structured through Orbia's Mexican corporate hierarchy) cannot match. That is a Rivulis competitive advantage that has not been widely priced in.
The strategic frame
The Israeli drip-irrigation category has been the single most successful export sector in modern Israeli industrial history. Netafim built the brand. Rivulis built the industrial base. Both companies are now inside the $10 billion UAE food-security allocation. Both companies are inside the parallel $7B India-UAE food corridor. Both companies are inside Morocco's ongoing Ras Al Khaimah-scale desert-agriculture pilots.
If Netafim's ongoing sale process closes with a Chinese-consortium buyer (currently reported at $1.4B valuation with Haoyu Wang leading the consortium per Olam's ongoing coverage), the Israeli drip-irrigation category rebalances. Rivulis becomes the sole Israeli-headquartered pure-play drip-irrigation platform of scale. That is a strategic shift the Gulf agtech market has not yet fully absorbed.
The Kibbutz Gvat origin story is 60 years old. The Temasek ownership is six years old. The Jain merger is four years old. Everything about Rivulis has changed — except the underlying industrial position, which keeps compounding regardless of the corporate structure above it.
The company that was Plastro is now the most institutionally embedded Israeli agritech platform in the Gulf. Nobody has been talking about that. The Silal and IHC buyer mesh has been quietly acting on it for years.