James Bristow, CEO of Rotam CropScience, described the breadth of the $750 million (€550m/ £450m) Hong Kong-Canadian Rotam Group, which also has assets in food retailing and pharmaceuticals. The company is taking a highly flexible, country-by-country and crop-by-crop approach to Europe, and has already invested €20 million in European product registrations.
“Rotam has a very special offering to the European market,” stated Mr Bristow. “Improvement, not copying, is our objective, using off-patent chemistry to develop better solutions through our in-house research and development programme. This will provide farmers with greater efficacy, improved yields and better resistance management options from our cost-effective manufacturing base in China.”
South Europe manager Marc Lore outlined Rotam’s growing European operation. His remit covers France, Spain, Portugal and Greece from Lyon, while the UK-based North and East Europe operation is responsible for all other countries as far as the Ukraine. “European agriculture varies a lot from country to country,” he said. “So Rotam’s approach has to be sensitive to national conditions and business models. We have already built good partnerships with leading national and regional distributors”.
Graham Dickinson, North and East Europe manager, outlined the pipeline of new products, with abamectin, metsulfuron-methyl and tebuconazole based products in wide circulation. “Critically, Rotam is totally independent of the multinational agchem companies in both in intellectual property and in manufacturing,” he emphasised.
For further information, please contact:
Charles Macdowell, Kendalls PR, +44 (0)1394 610022 charles.macdowell@kendallscom.co.uk
