News Business A growing business Kathryn Roberts
BASF is forecasting sales for its Crop Protection division of more than €6bn by 2015 and €8bn by 2020 – up around €2bn from previous estimates. To reach its new targets, the company – the third- largest global crop protection provider by sales after Syngenta and Bayer – is investing €1.8bn over the next five years to build and upgrade production and formulation capacities. It will invest 9% of the division’s sales into R&D. BASF plans to double annual investments in production plants from around €150m to more than €300m over the same period. The investment includes expansion of its blockbuster fungicides F500 and Xemium in Germany and its herbicides dicamba and Kixor in the US. BASF predicts sales for its pipeline products to be around €1.7bn by 2020. Around 50% of sales are expected to come from emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Speaking at its global crop protection
conference in Limburgerhof, Germany, in October 2013, Markus Heldt, president BASF Crop Protection, said, ‘It’s all about improving our productivity and yield from the available land and optimising the resources currently available in agriculture but it is also important to better understand consumer needs in this rapidly changing global environment and tailor production methods because these are different from one country to another.’ The three ‘pillars’ to BASF’s strategy, explained Heldt, are crop protection, formulations, and resource and stress management. ‘Our strategy now goes beyond fighting pests, insects and disease to improve productivity and yield,’ he said. The herbicide market, said Heldt, is
undergoing significant rapid change, driven by weed resistance in the US, Latin America and Australia. Much of BASF’s R&D focus is on maintaining a broad portfolio of herbicide attack, by developing new actives in one of six classes of chemistry – growth regulators; pigment inhibitors; seedling shoot
inhibitors; amino acid synthesis inhibitors, and cell membrane disruptors. Fungicides are another major R&D focus. BASF screens around 100,000 potential fungicides/year, covering four different modes of action. Its portfolio includes compounds that attack cell membranes, such as triazoles, succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors that bind to mitochondria; strobilurines that inhibit the complex III process in cells; and multi-site inhibitors, like Metricam. ‘The lifeblood of our overall strategy,’ said Heldt, ‘is R&D. On average, R&D funding has increased 7%/year over the past five years, and we believe it is a fully justified investment.’ BASF expects to increase its R&D expenditure in agricultural chemistry from €1.8bn for the last five-year period to 2012 to €2.5bn for the next five-year period.
Beyond traditional crop protection,
BASF has recently established a new global business unit – Functional Crop Care. ‘We are looking at chemical and biological products and seeing if we can bring these two platforms together in novel solutions,’ explained Heldt. The unit is investigating soil management – products to enhance water and nutrient deficiencies in soil – as well as seed treatments and products aimed at helping plants manage stress factors, such as heat, cold, nutrient deficiency. According to Jürgen Huff, senior vice president, Functional Crop Care, the use of traditional herbicides and fungicides increases crop yield by 40%. This yield can be doubled, however, if the additional factors are also addressed. ‘We are not talking about replacing one technology by another, but rather looking for holistic solutions that combine classic chemistry with biological solutions and provide the right tools in the future,’ he said. For example, Biostacked technology, a combination of microbial inoculants with traditional chemical technology, is expected to be available from 2014 as part of the seeds protection business. It has been shown to improve rooting, which leads to higher nutrient uptake and stronger drought-tolerant plants.
12 Chemistry&Industry • November 2013
Find C&I online at
www.soci.org/chemistryandindustry
‘The
lifeblood of our overall strategy is R&D. On average R&D funding has increased 7%/year over the past five years, and we believe it is a fully justified
investment’ Markus Heldt
president BASF Crop Protection
Philip Rosendorfer, vice president, R&D, Functional Crop Care, explains: ‘What is new in functional crop care is the combination of inoculants with nutrients to increase the survival of the seeds and with other chemicals to boost the interaction between the inoculant and the seed, or with biological fungicides to combat fungal disease in the soil, thus providing a holistic solution to the problem.’
Other work in progress includes a
product to optimise the distribution of water, aimed at farmers in India and Africa, and other parts of the world where water is scarce. Expected to be launched in 2015, BASF estimates it will save farmers up to 50% in water and irrigation costs. Another product, Limus, is being developed to manage nitrogen release from urea fertilisers. Currently 50% of nitrogen is lost between application and plant uptake, and there is a high level of uptake in the early stages of growth, more than the plant needs. Limus, which should be on the market in 2015, has been shown to reduce nitrogen losses and increase yields by 3-5%.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64