After considering sale, Syngenta remains committed to Woodland seed research center

Date:08-18-2017

Once part of a unit up for sale, Syngenta AG’s Woodland seed research lab is being kept as a valued part of the seed giant’s business.

Two years ago, Syngenta completed a $11.2 million expansion of its Woodland lab.

Now, after the recent $43 billion acquisition of Syngenta by China National Chemical Corp., the local seed business is likely to see ongoing investment.

Syngenta has been spending $1.3 billion annually in research and development and “our bias is to have more money going to research,” said Matthew Johnston, global head of vegetables with Syngenta.

He’s based in Switzerland, but he was in Woodland for its field day Wednesday, where farmers from North America and Central America come to choose what to grow. He said he was unable to break down the research commitment specifically to Woodland, but that it is many millions of dollars a year.

At the field day for customers Wednesday, Syngenta opened its otherwise closed campus for a tour of new technology and varieties of fruit for more than 100 growers in the Americas.

Most people know California supplies much of the produce to the country, but it also develops and supplies many vegetable seeds to the whole world.

Some of that is developed at the Syngenta seed research center on 200 acres near Woodland. The Sacramento region is a worldwide hub for research and development of tomato, melon, cucumber and squash varieties. Seed companies HM Clause, Monsanto Co., Bayer CropScience also have local labs for research and development of those crops.

A wave of mega-merger announcements shook the seed and agricultural chemicals business in the past two years, and it put into question the future of local operations. Monsanto (NYSE: MON) made a bid it buy Syngenta in 2015. That proposed deal didn’t go anywhere, but it prompted Syngenta in September 2015 to announce it would sell its profitable vegetable seed business.

Now, Johnston says Syngenta is committed to vegetable seeds. He said that sale was only put on the table for a few months in late 2015 before it was retracted early the next year.