DuPont seed subsidiary DuPont Pioneer has opened a maize seed processing plant in Ethiopia. The facility cost DuPont some $2 million, rising to some $4 million over the next three years in the plant and in improving distribution and storage facilities. The company has benefited from government and US Agency for International Development help in establishing the facility. The collaboration will provide sample seed to demonstration plots and field training sessions, and the use and acceptance of ...

Bayer CropScience plans to build a “world-scale” glufosinate-ammonium herbicide plant in the US near Mobile, Alabama. The plant is expected to come on stream in the fourth quarter of 2015 in time for the 2016 growing season. The facility will contribute significantly to the company’s goal of more than doubling its production capacity for glufosinate-ammonium, Bayer points out. It currently manufactures the herbicide in the US at Muskegon, Michigan and in Germany at its site at Frankfurt. ...

German company Linde Gases (Munich) has launched its fumigants business under the name Crop Science. Its product range comprises the fumigants, Vapormate (ethyl formate) and EDN (ethanedinitrile). The company has opened a facility in the Czech Republic to manufacture ethanedinitrile. Linde developed the active ingredient in collaboration with the Australian government research organisation, the CSIRO (Agrow No 629, p 25). The company says that its fumigants are “highly effective substitutes” ...

Arysta LifeScience has realigned two of its global business units to “maximise market presence, competitiveness, and growth potential”. The Africa and Middle East business unit has been expanded to include western and southern Europe. It will now be called Africa Western Europe. The Japan and North Asia business unit has been expanded to include central and eastern Europe. The new business unit will be called Japan & Central/Eastern Europe. “These changes are aligning us more closely with ...

One of the least foreseen acquisitions of 2012 was the near-$500 million Bayer CropScience move for the company with the world’s largest R&D team focused solely on biopesticides, AgraQuest, in August. It did not serve as prey for Bayer CropScience, but a business that sought to extend its products to markets “it would have been impossible” to reach alone, says former AgraQuest CEO and head of Bayer Biologicals. “We had rejected other offers, Bayer was the best fit.” “AgraQuest had a sales team ...