developing a new genetically modified corn variety incorporating the enzyme amylase, which will make it far easier to ferment into alcohol.
Let the snow ball roll!!
Syngenta Looks for Business Boost from Biofuels
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UK: February 10, 2006
LONDON - Swiss agrochemicals and seeds group Syngenta expects to be a major beneficiary of the world's growing love affair with biofuels, executives said on Thursday.
Governments around the world are stepping up efforts to encourage greater use of fuels derived from farm crops, as an alternative to costly fossil fuels like petroleum, which has soared in price to more than $60 a barrel.
"The whole landscape is changing very quickly at the moment ... and we are not badly placed at all to take advantage of this," Chief Executive Michael Pragnell told a post-results news conference in London.
US President George W. Bush said 10 days ago that America was addicted to oil and set a goal of reducing US dependence on oil from the Middle East by 75 percent in 20 years, in part by using alternatives such as ethanol-blended gasoline.
The European Union, meanwhile, could set mandatory targets for biofuels later this year, its farm chief said on Wednesday. Europe currently has only a voluntary goal that biofuels should make up a 5.75 percent share of transport fuels by 2010.
Both these initiatives create an opportunity for Syngenta to produce new lines of crop seed tailored to the needs of fuel production. At the same time, its chemicals business may benefit from increased use of pesticides on new biofuel crop acreage.
David Jones, the company's head of business development, said the target crops were corn in the United States and sugar beet and oilseed rape in Europe.
He believes biofuels will be a long-term driver of innovation in the seed division, which last year accounted for 22 percent of group sales.
"It seems vanishingly unlikely that crops that have been bred through millennia to be good food and fibre providers for mankind are going to be perfect for fuel," Jones told Reuters.
"Therefore there are breeding opportunities to make them better for this new job."
In the United States, Syngenta estimates, some 13 percent of corn acreage is already grown for ethanol production and that proportion is set to climb rapidly as new processing factories are built.
The US currently has 95 ethanol plants but 26 new ones are under construction and 25 are planned, suggesting a 50 percent increase in next three to four years, Jones said.
Syngenta is also developing a new genetically modified corn variety incorporating the enzyme amylase, which will make it far easier to ferment into alcohol. Its amylase corn variety was submitted for approval to US regulators last year and could reach the market in 2007.
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