Agchem companies target niche markets

22 June 2007 22:20  [Source: ICIS news]

By Clay Boswell

NEW YORK (ICIS news)--The new active ingredients being released by agrochemical companies are increasingly niche oriented, industry consultants said Friday.

At the same time, the total number of ingredients reaching the market has fallen, they said.

In the 1970s, 101 actives were introduced, an average of 10.1/year. For the 1980s, the average was 12.3/year, and for the 1990s, 12.6/year.

The 2000s have seen 73 actives introduced so far, or 10.4/year.

“It is arguable that the rate of new product introductions is declining slightly from a peak average rate of around 12 per year in the ‘80s and ‘90s to around 10 now,” said Matthew Phillips, a partner with Phillips McDougall, an agrochemical consultancy in the UK.

Nigel Uttley, managing director of the agrochemical consultancy Enigma Marketing Research in the UK, said there is a clear trend in the declining assignment of ISO common names to new active ingredients. Uttley said there are several reasons behind the trend.

Many of the needs of farmers have already been met, he said.

Regulatory hurdles are also more rigorous than in the past, so that agchem companies employing the same discovery tools used in pharmaceuticals are achieving similarly disappointing results, he said. “There are far more actives being discovered, but they’re not getting through to the marketplace.”

The industry’s consolidation has had an effect, as well, Uttley said.

Notably, many of the newest actives have been discovered by the fragmented Japanese agchem industry. Uttley expects the pipeline from Japan to slow with consolidation.

Nonetheless, there remains ample room for innovative actives, he said.

Resistance is an increasing problem, particularly for insecticides and fungicides. Opportunities also exist for products that can improve crop yield, simplify use, reduce metabolites and provide a safer and more environmentally friendly profile.

Phillips identified several of the factors shaping the pipelines themselves. For example, because of the commercial success of herbicide-tolerant crops - mainly Roundup Ready crops - many companies no longer conduct herbicide R&D for soybean, canola, corn and cotton.

“In addition, preference is given by regulators for more specific insecticides, such as those that control only the sucking-pest complex,” he pointed out.

“New insecticide products that are more specific in action and have good toxicity/environmental profiles are often given fast-track approval because they offer alternatives to broad-spectrum products such as organophosphate insecticides," he said. "As result, much of the insecticide R&D is focused on discovering more-specific products with new modes of action.”

Much of the R&D in fungicides is likewise targeted at discovering new molecules with novel modes of action, Phillips said. “Fungal resistance is a major issue, particularly in the cereal sector (wheat, barley) and this drives much of the new discovery programs.”

Agrochemical companies include Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Monsanto, Dow Chemical and DuPont.

Look for the full story in the 25 June issue of ICIS Chemical Business Americas.

By: Clay Boswell
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