July 4, 2012, Monheim, Germany – Bayer CropScience has announced the company signed an agreement to purchase AgraQuest, Inc. for a purchase price of US$ 425 million plus milestone payments.
AgraQuest, headquartered in Davis, Calif., is a global supplier of biological pest management solutions based on natural microorganisms.
With this acquisition, Bayer CropScience hopes to build on its technology platform for green products and strengthen its fruits and vegetables business. Green products control a broad spectrum of pests and diseases and offer farmers integrated pest management programs to minimize development of resistance and maximize crop yields.
“The growing fruits and vegetables market, which today accounts for more than 25 per cent of our sales, is of strategic importance for us,” said Sandra Peterson, CEO of Bayer CropScience. “With the acquisition of AgraQuest we are underlining our growth ambitions.”
The company hopes the portfolio and research and development pipeline of AgraQuest will help Bayer CropScience to build a broad-based technology platform to bring a new generation of products to the market.
“AgraQuest expands our existing biological pest control portfolio,” said Peterson. “It allows us to further leverage the biotechnology platform we have acquired through Athenix Corporation.”
“We are proud to become part of Bayer CropScience,” said AgraQuest CEO Marcus Meadows-Smith. “AgraQuest is ideally positioned as a technology leader in the global biological market and by joining forces with Bayer CropScience we will be able to develop revolutionary, tailor-made biological solutions.”
AgraQuest has its own sales force in the NAFTA crop protection market and sells its green products through a network of distributors and partners in other global regions.
AgraQuest’s current product portfolio includes brands such as Serenade, Rhapsody, Sonata and Ballad fungicides and Requiem insecticides. Bayer CropScience also plans to leverage AgraQuest’s technology platform and its pipeline of new biological control agents. Several new products, which include acaracides, fungicides and nematicides, are under development, and have undergone successful early field evaluations.
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