Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Better European Opportunities For Seed Markets

Speaking at the Credit Suisse 2008 Global Agrochemicals Conference in London yesterday, DuPont Vice President and General Manager and Pioneer Hi-Bred President Paul Schickler  said Pioneer is well positioned to serve the vast agricultural opportunity in Eastern Europe.

“We expect rapid expansion in the high growth Eastern Europe agriculture markets,” Paul said.  “Eastern Europe accounts for close to 60 percent of the corn acres in Europe and our seed corn products are performing very well against competitive products.  Our new sunflower and canola (oilseed rape) products also are well adapted for the area and sales are growing rapidly.”

Pioneer has grown its seed corn market share for all of Europe by more than four points over the last five years, Paul said. The Pioneer volume of seed corn has grown by 39 percent during that time while total hectares planted to corn have remained relatively stable.

Paul said Pioneer, which had USD 3.3 billion in revenue in 2007 and is a key growth engine for DuPont, is extending its leadership in all international seed markets with particularly strong gains in Brazil and Argentina, where biotech crops are being widely adopted.

In North America, he said, the business is on track to hold corn market share and grow soybean seed market share in 2008. 

“We are seeing strong demand for our high-yielding products in North America,” Paul said.  “Our strong line-up of new products bodes well for this year’s growing season and the years that follow.”

Paul’s presentation is available in the DuPont Investor Center at http://www2.dupont.com/Investor_Center/en_US/.

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