Agro Kanesho acquires Bayer's R&D center

Japanese agrochemical company Agro-Kanesho Co., announced Monday that agreed to buy a research and development center in Yuki, Ibaraki Prefecture, from Bayer Cropscience, a Japanese unit of Germany's Bayer AG in January 2012 after the center’s closure, slated for this December. It plans to use the center, which will be tentatively renamed Yuki Operations Center, for its R&D activities and to construct a new plant on the site to reorganize its production setup.

The company’s Fukushima works is located within a 3-km radius of Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and has been evacuated since the crippling of the power plant by the March earthquake. Production previously carried out there has been consigned to other manufactures, but can’t meet quickly the needs of the market for some of its mainstay items.

By taking over Bayer’s center, which has 29,000 m2 of floor area and a 19,000 m2 agricultural test field, Agro-Kanesho will be able to strengthen its R&D capabilities, which it considers necessary. For the new plant, which is planned to handle the manufacturing and packaging of its Basamid soil-treatment formulation and Kanemite miticide, details have still to be worked out, but completion is scheduled for the end of 2012. According to the company, the new production structure will allow it to optimize its own and outsourced operations, enabling profit improvement and risk reduction due to concentrated production.

Agro-Kanesho will also welcome Bayer’s researchers who are presently working at the center to add to its R&D proficiency. Moreover, it will relocate its biological research division from Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, to Yuki and have the Yuki test field replace its Tomisato test field in Chiba Prefecture.