Sandoz Agro Canada has awarded its $2-million account to Marketing Communication of London, Ont. after a four-month review.

The Mississauga, Ont.-based Sandoz began the review with 24 agencies in the running, and ended with a short-list of three, including Griffin Bacal Volny of Toronto and Ginty Jocius & Associates of Guelph, Ont.

In February of this year, Sandoz Agro ended a seven-year relationship with Quarry Communications of Waterloo, Ont.

The split was amicable and precipitated by a conflict between Sandoz, which makes agricultural herbicides, and a product to be launched by another Quarry client.

Marketing Communication will be working on Sandoz products such as Frontier, a weed control product for corn and soybeans, introduced earlier this year, and Clarity, a broadleaf weed control product for corn, which is undergoing registration in Canada before its launch.

Swiss-based parent company Sandoz operates in 56 countries, producing pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, dyestuffs, specialty foods, seeds and agrochemicals.

It recently agreed to buy giant baby food company Gerber Foods for US$3.7 billion.