Bayer CropScience: Sales of new products should rise to EUR 2 billion
Bayer CropScience AG has substantially raised its forecast for annual sales of crop protection products containing new active ingredients, to EUR 2 billion. Since 2000, Bayer CropScience has introduced 16 new substances, which already posted revenues of EUR 517 million in the first half of 2005. Including a further 10 substances scheduled for launch through 2011, the company now believes the products emerging from its R& D pipeline have a peak sales potential of about EUR 2 billion. So far the company's target for sales of the new products had been set at EUR 1 billion a year, to be achieved by the end of 2006.
An expected addition to the product portfolio next year is the new fungicidal active ingredient fluopicolid. In the area of insecticides, Bayer CropScience plans to launch the active ingredient flubendiamide in 2007. Another insecticide in the pipeline is spirotetramat, the third ketoenol from Bayer CropScience following spirodiclofen and spiromesifen.
In the field of plant biotechnology, too, Bayer CropScience intends to strengthen its position through its own research. Lykele van der Broek, Head of the BioScience Business Group outlined new avenues of research ranging from plants with improved stress tolerance through the development of health-promoting canola varieties to biopharmaceutical products based on renewable raw materials. Bayer CropScience invests some EUR80 million annually in its bioscience research, which has already given rise to such successful products as the high-yielding canola variety InVigor® and the cotton seed FiberMax®.
In the future Bayer CropScience plans to concentrate even more on the introduction of new ingredients, with the focus on modern, high-performance products that make above-average contributions to value creation. Five new substances - the fungicides prothioconazole and trifloxystrobin and the herbicides iodosulfuron, mesosulfuron and foramsulfuron - are already among Bayer CropScience's 12 best-selling products. Sales of these products have been particularly strong in Europe, as Jacques du Puy, head of the company's Europe region, explained. Sales of new products in Europe rose by some 50 percent in the first half of 2005.
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