Specialty Chemicals: What's next?
1 Jun, 2004 By: Ron Hall Landscape ManagementManufacturers focus on wringing value from today's chemistry in the face of rapidly changing market forces
|
Editor’s note: Specialty chemicals are vital to the ongoing growth of the Green Industry and, in particular, to those of us involved in the professional turf and landscape industry. Many forces are shaping our ongoing access to these products. In this report, we investigate market forces, dollars-and-cents forces, likely to have an impact on the products available to us and to those yet to be developed for our green market.
From his front yard, Jim Mohrman can look toward the cloud of water vapor hanging over the massive concrete cooling tower at the Davis Besse nuclear power plant 14 miles to the northeast. The farmland here in northwest Ohio, former marshland, is flat and its soil is heavy and fertile. Jim and his dad farm 300 acres of soybeans and, like most of their neighbors, they switched to Roundup Ready beans seven or eight years ago.
"Before, we would mix a couple of weed controls, one for grasses and another for broadleaves," says Mohrman. "Now we use a quart of Roundup in 18 gallons of spray per acre. We've tried as low as a pint per acre when the weeds were small and, sometimes, we didn't have to come back."
The stakes are high
What's Jim's farm got to do with us in the Green Industry?On the surface, not much it would seem. Not right now anyway. But worldwide changes in agriculture caused by advances in biotechnology present just one of many challenges to the developers of chemical pest control products.
In the case of the millions of acres now planted in Roundup Ready and Bt-containing crops (a gene from bacillus thuringiensis is engineered into a crop to control destructive lepidoptera pests), it means reduced demand for many once-popular herbicides and insecticides, and it may mean less incentive to develop new ones. This has implications for us since many of the pesticides that we've relied upon have been developed for use in agriculture and then formulated and labeled for turf and ornamentals.
"The flow of new chemistry is going to be impacted by changes in the agricultural community," says Gary D. Curl, a longtime industry figure who now offers market research to the specialty chemical industry. "Companies are raising the bar in terms of the market potential to justify development of a new molecule."
With the cost of bringing a new active ingredient to the marketplace at $100 million or more, the stakes are high.
An attractive market
It's never wise to overstate a case, however, and manufacturers do develop or acquire chemistry specifically for T&O.For example, FMC Specialty Products Business acquired the active flonicamid from an overseas partner and is readying a new insecticide to control sucking plant pests such as aphids. The product will be introduced into the greenhouse/nursery market first and then into T&O.
Jim Walter, Business Development Manager, says the product is in registration and may be available by year's end. The company also has a product in the works to control surface-feeding pests, but it's too early in the process to discuss, he adds.
 Jim Walter |
The fact is the Green Industry remains an attractive market for specialty chemical makers with lawn care growing at a respectable 3-5% annually thanks to convenience-loving Boomers, strong home construction, growth in the South and Southwest with their long growing seasons and consumers' pride in their properties.
 Jim Fetter |
Jim Fetter, Director of Marketing, Bayer Environmental Sciences identified the following marketplace trends at a media event at the Bayer ES research facility in Clayton, NC, last summer:
- Consolidation at all levels in the channel ( manufacturer , distributor , end user )
- Loss of older chemistry
- New and more restrictive regulations , slower registration turnaround
- Longer intervals between new product introductions
- New product life cycle shortening
- More targeted , less broad - based approach to pest control
- Increasing generic competition
- Growing emphasis on differentiation by manufacturers and distributors
- Manufacturer , reseller and end user profitability pressure
These shifts, to one degree or another, affect everyone who counts on the flow of new chemistry and chemical innovations to meet pest problems on the turfgrass and ornamentals they maintain. But what do these shifts mean to end users right now?
1 2 3
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.