Valmont Appoints Thomas Liguori as Chief Financial Officer

Aug 27, 2024

OMAHA, Neb. — Valmont Industries, Inc., a global leader that provides vital infrastructure and advances agricultural productivity while driving innovation through technology, announced Aug. 22, 2024 that Thomas Liguori will join the Company as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Liguori will lead the global finance and accounting organization, reporting to Avner M. Applbaum, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Liguori has more than 30 years of finance experience with a proven track record of creating value, including significant experience as the CFO for multiple public companies. Most recently, he was CFO of Fortna LLC, a private-equity-backed designer and builder of advanced distribution centers for ecommerce and omnichannel distribution. Before joining Fortna, Mr. Liguori was the CFO of Avnet, a Fortune 200 global semiconductor distributor, where he played a key role in transforming the company to achieve higher growth and profitability, including initiatives to improve working capital and enhance operating efficiencies. He has experience across a diverse range of industries, including manufacturing, distribution and technology.

“I am excited to have Tom join our executive leadership team and partner with me as we move our strategy forward,” Mr. Applbaum commented. “His extensive public-company experience leading global finance organizations, with demonstrated success creating value for shareholders and developing talent across the finance function, will be a great addition to Valmont. Tom has a proven track record of executing strategy and deploying a sound capital allocation framework while driving growth and margin expansion. I look forward to his contribution to our success.”

Click here to see more...

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.