Director, Dave Saltman, and myself to see the investment Bayer make in terms of their Research and Development (R&D) programmes. Environmental Science is the specialist division within Bayer CropScience which is committed to developing high-quality control products for the Turf and Amenity Industry. Both are part of the global Bayer AG, based in Leverkusen, Germany, with almost 109,000 employees worldwide and a yearly turnover of more than 33 billion Euros across its three main business areas - Healthcare, Material Science and CropScience. Bayer CropScience is one of the world’s leading crop science companies. Its main headquarters are located in Monheim, Germany and its UK headquarters are on the outskirts of Cambridge. Bayer CropScience has 18,300 employees working worldwide and commits 10% of its annual turnover to research and development. Bayer Environmental Science has a wealth of expertise and experience focused on the world’s turf and amenity markets whilst, at the same time, remaining dedicated to developing and marketing solutions for the protection of turf and sports surfaces in the UK and Ireland, ranging from products such as the well known Chipco® and Dedicate®
Green , protecting turf from
important diseases, to Merit®
Turf, the
revolutionary chafer grub and leatherjacket control.
The company was also very proud to demonstrate its global commitment to reducing its CO2
emissions, by
initiatives such as the way it develops products, and uses its resources with the aim of ‘Protecting Tomorrow Today through Innovation’. For example, Bayer Environmental Science’s new packaging saves 20% on greenhouse gas emissions, 26% on energy and 12% on water consumption through its entire life-cycle (and also each employee is targeted to control their CO2 on an annual basis).
emissions In 1924, Bayer established its first
Crop Protection research department. This was superseded in 1979 when construction began on the new Agricultural Centre in Monheim, today Bayer CropScience’s headquarters. The history of Bayer Environmental Science in the UK and Ireland goes back to companies such as May and Baker, through to Rhone Poulenc and Aventis CropScience, whom Bayer purchased in 2002.
There has been continual development over the sixty hectare site, culminating in an array of technical and administrative buildings where 1,800 chemists, biologists, engineers and laboratory technicians are employed.
The visit was over two days, and we
were accommodated at the Kasino Hotel, Leverkusen, Bayer’s own Hotel. With so much to see, and with a full itinerary, we knew it would be hectic, and it certainly was. On arrival at the CropScience centre we went through a stringent security check and were met by Dirk Boenicke who welcomed us to Bayer. This was followed by a small presentation by James Hadlow on how a pesticide comes to market, the research that goes into formulating a new product and the safeguards in place to ensure it meets all safety requirements and legislation. The process begins by agreeing the aims and objectives of a specific product. This is usually after turf managers, greenkeepers and other industry managers have identified what sort of products they require. We were then taken to see one of Bayer’s newest facilities, its unique substance library, which holds in excess of eight million substances that have been produced since the company started.
This building is fully automated.
Here, robots source and select any given substance and put it together with a number of others to make up a new formulation. Research efficiency is vastly
increased by the use of modern computer simulation (modelling tools)
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