Adjuvants and Additives

This report is a complete and comprehensive update of two previous reports entitled “Adjuvants and Additives in Crop protection”, published by Agrow Reports in 2000 and 2003. Written by industry expert Alan Knowles, this report covers all aspects of crop protection product formulation and the use of additives and adjuvants in formulations and as tank mixes. Since the previous reports were published the pace of change in the international agrochemical industry has been accelerating rapidly. The effect of this change and its impact on the technology for pesticide formulations, additives and adjuvants, is described in this current update.

There are now only six major international agrochemical companies, the socalled ‘Big 6' . Generic producers are now much more important to the business as a whole. The ‘Big 6' companies carry out the bulk of the research aimed at discovering new compounds involving chemical synthesis, biological, toxicological and environmental testing. Of these companies only Syngenta continues to do significant research in the UK, while its headquarters are in Switzerland. The other two European companies, Bayer CropScience and BASF are based in Germany. The remaining three companies, Du Pont, Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences are based in the US. Some other agrochemical companies, along with a few Japanese companies are still doing research to discover new agrochemicals, but in terms of global annual sales these companies are now in a so-called ‘Second Division' . There is an increasing presence of Asian companies, notably from China and India, producing generic pesticides and formulations. However, a small number of organisations, especially in China, are beginning to do their own discovery research work. The status of all these companies worldwide is discussed fully in this report. The value of the global agrochemical business at end user level was about US$ 33.6 billion in 2005. Forecasts point to decline from 2006 onwards, mainly due to economic and regulatory pressures, the introduction of cheaper generic products and the increasing planting of GM crops. It is estimated that the market value for generic and post-patent products currently represents about 70% of the global agrochemical market value.