Syngenta

Syngenta AG

Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Traded as	SIX: SYNN NYSE: SYT
Industry	Chemicals
Founded	2000
Headquarters	Basel, Switzerland
Key people	Martin Taylor (Chairman) Michael Mack (CEO)
Products	Seeds, pesticides, flowers
Operating income	US $2.05 billion (2011)
Profit	US $1.60 billion (2011)
Total assets	US $17.24 billion (end 2011)
Total equity	US $7.503 billion (end 2011)
Employees	26,000 (end 2011)
Website	syngenta.com

Syngenta AG is a large global Swiss specialized chemicals company which markets seeds and pesticides. Syngenta is involved in biotechnology and genomic research. The company ranks third in total sales in the commercial agricultural seeds market. Sales in 2010 were approximately US$ 11.6 billion. Syngenta employs over 27,000 people in over 90 countries. Syngenta is listed on both the Swiss stock exchange and in New York.

History

Based in Basel, Switzerland, Syngenta was formed in 2000 by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. Its roots are considerably older.

In 1758 the city’s Johann Rudolf Geigy-Gemuseus began trading in “Materials, Chemicals, Dyes and Drugs of all kinds”. In 1876, Sandoz Laboratories began business in Basel, followed in 1884 by Ciba. These three companies ultimately became Novartis in 1995. Ciba-Geigy, formed in 1971, had concentrated mainly on crop protection in its agro division, Sandoz more on seeds.

A Syngenta works in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire originally owned by ICI.

Zeneca Agrochemicals was part of AstraZeneca, and formerly of Imperial Chemical Industries. ICI was formed in the UK in 1926. Two years later, work began at the Agricultural Research Station at Jealott’s Hill near Bracknell.

In 2004, Syngenta Seeds purchased the North American corn and soybean business of Advanta, as well as Garst and Golden Harvest.

In 2005, Syngenta opposed a Swiss ban on genetically engineered organisms.

In 2007, Syngenta's Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, one of only a handful of agribusiness firms to receive this honour.

Syngenta finances the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. This non-profit organization supports sustainable food security projects in a number of countries.

Some of Syngenta's main competitors are: Monsanto Company, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience and DuPont.

Products

Syngenta has eight primary product lines. The company develops, markets and sells these worldwide:

Pesticides:

• Selective Herbicides
• Non-selective Herbicides
• Fungicides
• Insecticides
• Professional Products

Seeds:

• Field Crops
• Vegetables
• Flowers

Syngenta's field crops include both hybrid seeds and genetically engineered seeds, some of which enter the food chain and become part of genetically modified food. According to Syngenta, in the US their "proprietary triple stack corn seeds expanded to represent around 25 percent of units sold." In 2010 the US EPA granted registration approval for insecticidal trait stacks including Syngenta's AGRISURE VIPTERA™ gene, which offers resistance to certain corn pests. Syngenta also cross-licenses its proprietary genes with Dow AgroSciences and thus is able to include Dow's Herculex®1 I and Herculex® RW insect resistance traits in its seeds. It also sells a VMAX® soybean that is resistant to glyphosate herbicide.

In 2003, more than half of Syngenta sales came from herbicides and fungicides.

Key Syngenta brands include Aatrex (atrazine), Actara, Amistar (azoxystrobin), Callisto, Cruiser (TMX, Thiamethoxam), Daconil (Chlorothalonil), DualGold, Golden Harvest, Garst, Lumax (a selective herbicide), Northrup-King (NK), Rogers, S&G, Gramoxone (paraquat), and Vigor (TMX, Thiamethoxam).

The insecticide TMX (Thiamethoxam)is a second-generation neonicotinoid patented by Syngenta.

Biofuels

Like many ag-companies, Syngenta also works in the bio-fuel space.

In 2007, Queensland University in Australia contracted with Syngenta to research different inputs for biofuels as a renewable energy source.

Board of directors

Syngenta is led by Chairman Martin Taylor. The other Directors are Peggy Bruzelius, Michael Mack, Pierre Landolt, Stefan Borgas, David Lawrence, Peter Thompson, Jacques Vincent, Rolf Watter, Felix Weber, and Juerg Witmer.

Changes in 2007/2008 Michael Pragnell, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Member of the Board, retired from Syngenta. On January 1, 2008 Michael Mack became the new Chief Executive Officer. He was also elected as a new member of the Syngenta Board of Directors in 2008.

Planned changes in 2012 On 8 February 2012, Syngenta announced that the Board of Directors will propose the election of three new members at the Annual General Meeting on April 24, 2012. Pierre Landolt and Rolf Watter, two existing members of the Board, will retire, having completed their term of office. The three proposed new members are: Vinita Bali, Gunnar Brock and Michel Demaré.

Legal issues and controversies

Syngenta and its predecessor companies have been involved in numerous legal actions over the years.

A series of fatalities due to accidental consumption of the company’s herbicide, Gramoxone (Paraquat)occurred in the 1960s. Because the product was used in a number of suicides during the 1970s and 1980s, blue dye, foul odor, and a powerful emetic were added to discourage misuse.

Atrazine has been banned in several Wisconsin counties in the United States and in the European Union. Syngenta has been accused of attempting to block the publication of UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes's work on Atrazine. Dr. Hayes resigned from his contractor position with Syngenta after they refused to allow him to publish results of studies they had funded due to their disputable results. He obtained independent funding to repeat the research and published the results. Tyrone Hayes's original research found that Atrazine caused hermaphroditism in frogs. In turn, Tyrone Hayes has been arrested several times for sending offensive raps and songs to Syngenta employees. He is generally alienated from his research peers.

EPA and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on this topic - including Hayes' work - and concluded there is "currently insufficient data" to determine if atrazine may affect amphibian development. As required by the EPA, Syngenta conducted two experiments under Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) and inspection by the USEPA and German regulatory authorities. In 2007 the EPA held another Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) on the topic and concluded "that atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development".

Syngenta's insecticide Galecron Chlordimeform,introduced for use on cotton and tobacco in 1966, was found to be carcinogenic in mice via its metabolite, para-chloro-ortho-toluidine. Nine of 22 men working on a chlordimeform packaging line developed acute hemorrhagic cystitis in 1975, reported in 1978, heightening suspicions of an association with bladder cancer. Syngenta took Galecron temporarily off the market in 1976 and stopped its production between 1976 and 1978, during which it supposedly created "safety assessments", which are unpublished. It took another 10 years of research to accumulate until EPA cancelled its license and production halted permanently in 1988. The International Agency for Research on Cancer had concluded in its first assessment of chlordimeform in 1983, that since no relevant data on humans were available, "data were insufficient to evaluate the carcinogenicity to humans". Germany changed Galecron's classification from animal carcinogen to human carcinogen in 1986 and the IARC in 1987. In a 1995 class action in the US, Ciba-Geigy agreed to cover costs for employee health monitoring and treatment. In 2005, Syngenta reported that employee health monitoring was continuing at the company's Monthey, Switzerland site.

In 2001, the United States Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of Syngenta when the company filed suit against Bayer to protect its patent on a class of neonicotinoid insecticides. The following year Syngenta filed suit against Monsanto and a number of other companies claiming infringement of its U.S. biotechnology patents covering transgenic corn and cotton.

In 2004, the company again filed suit against Monsanto, claiming antitrust violations related to the U.S. biotech corn seed market.

In September 2008 Syngenta's U.S. subsidiaries announced settlements with the United States Environmental Protection Agency totaling $284,000. In various separate cases, the company had been alleged to have failed to store PPE away from areas contaminated with pesticides; distributed its mesotrione wet paste herbicide with a chemical composition different to that registered with the EPA; and violated rules governing the advertisement of restricted-use pesticides.

In October 2008 Syngenta was found guilty of wrongful termination in a federal lawsuit in Baltimore, Maryland. A female employee who complained to management about an abusive manager was terminated after the complaint was filed. A jury awarded her $1.85 million. On May 8, 2009 the judge in the case awarded the woman an additional $244,113.24 in legal fees. The judge, Benson Everett Legg, noted in his order that the counsel for the defense, Whiteford, Taylor and Preston, had billed Syngenta $264,003 for 2,025.5 hours of work. The judge ruled that the fees charged by the counsel for the plaintiff were reasonable. The Syngenta legal record also includes citations by regulators, NGOs, and individuals for health issues related to its products.

Influence and Lobbying in the U.S

Syngenta's contributions to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups totaled $267,902 during 2012 according to The Center for Responsive Politics, which published figures from the Senate Office of Public Records. However its lobbying expenditures for agricultural services and products of $1,150,000 during 2012 dwarf these in comparison, ranking Syngenta at #7 out of 99 reported entities in this sector. Syngenta has been retaining multiple lobbying firms, to press their case for them.

Farmers Support Team

Syngenta sponsors several agricultural programs in developing nations. SFI created its flagship program, the Farmer Support Team (FST). The FST is a nationwide program in the Philippine archipelago. It works with farmers in all the major rice, fruit, and vegetable production provinces of the country. It began by helping Filipino farmers gain greater understanding and achieve higher productivity through trainings in Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Integrated Crop Management (ICM) and Total Crop Management (TCM).

Syngenta Foundation

The objectives and goals of the Syngenta Foundation are "to work with rural communities in the semiarid regions of the world and improve their livelihoods."

The Syngenta Foundation addressed the World Food Day Symposium in 2005 as an output of the Millennium Ecosystem Report.

Awards and community involvement

In October 2008, Syngenta Crop Protection Canada, Inc. was recognized as one of Waterloo Area's Top Employers, as announced in the Waterloo Region Record, Guelph Mercury and Cambridge Times. In 2011, Syngenta was named among the top 10 employers in biotechnology by Science magazine. The company was also recognized by the 2011 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) as one of the best performing chemical companies worldwide. Syngenta was one of only five chemical companies in the World and Europe indices based on economic, social and environmental performance.

External links

Media related to Syngenta at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website