Bayer CropScience growing its canola seed business

In the last five years, Bayer CropScience, headquartered in Calgary, has launched 13 new crop protection products for Canadian farmers.

It also plans to launch four new InVigor hybrid canola seed varieties in 2014 as it continues to grow its business across the country.

“In the last 10 years our business has probably multiplied by four. We went from roughly $200 million to an $800-million business in Canada and we’ve doubled our employees,” said Kamel Beliazi, chief executive of Bayer CropScience.

“We have 50 per cent market share in canola and we are a leading player in crop protection. We still want to grow our business moving forward but obviously we are not alone in the market ... We still see some growth in our canola business moving forward and we still see some growth in crop protection.”

The company, which has been in Calgary for the past 10 years, has 70 employees in the city. It also has a canola facility in Saskatoon and a crop protection facility in Regina. It employs about 350 people in Canada with that number rising to 500 people during the summer.

Bayer CropScience has made more than $25 million in local investments over the past five years.

“The primary objective of our organization is to market innovation for growth basically. To improve the yield of the crops primarily but also quality of the food in general,” said Beliazi. “If you look at the history of Bayer CropScience in Canada, we’ve been investing heavily in all the crops across Canada but the two most important ones are canola and wheat, both in acreage and value.

“We live and breathe innovation.”

Christian Lauterbach, president and chief executive of Bayer Inc. which is based in Toronto, said “the crop business is incredibly important” for the corporation.
Lauterbach, who was recently in Calgary to visit the crop science division, said Bayer in Canada is a $1.6 billion business with about 1,300 employees. Total research and development investment in 2012 was $55.9 million.

Over the next 18 to 24 months, Bayer expects to launch over 10 new products — more than in the last decade.

In 2000, Rhone Poulenc (based out of Guelph) and Agrevo (based out of Regina) merged to form Aventis, which was headquartered out of Regina. In 2001, Bayer acquired the Aventis Crop business and combined with their Agrochemicals division to form Bayer CropScience.

Recently, a report by BMO Economics said the Canadian agriculture industry is expected to show steady production growth following a good harvest last year, with exports to emerging markets providing a growing source of revenue in 2013.

“Rapid economic expansion in emerging markets and lagging demand growth from south of the border has resulted in increasing export market diversification,” said Aaron Goertzen, economist with BMO Capital Markets. “Although global competition is stiff, Canadian producers’ productivity edge has contributed to a large and growing trade surplus.”

The report said advances in technology, improvements in management practices and industry consolidation have resulted in sustained productivity growth. Innovation has consistently and significantly expanded the industry’s productive capacity, with gross output per hectare having more than quadrupled over the past half-century. And there are few signs that innovation is slowing – with private spending on research and development in the agriculture sector having grown at roughly twice the pace of the Canadian total over the past decade.