The global and North American CEOs of Bayer CropScience are thrilled with their new facility for biologics and vegetable seeds research and development in West Sacramento.
“It is a very big deal for us,” said Liam Condon, CEO of Bayer CropScience and Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer CropScience AG. “This is a very big investment … it’s part of our U.S. strategy and our global strategy.”
Condon says they have some of the best and brightest scientific minds working in the new state of the art facility. “If you come out of university, you dream of having a facility like this, so as a scientist you can explore and come up with fantastic new ideas,” he said.
The company plans to invest nearly $1 billion in capital expenditures before 2016 to ramp up research and development. “For Bayer, research and development is the heart and soul of the company,” said Condon. Interview with Bayer CropScience global CEO Liam Condon
“This is the culmination of our new strategy to bring integrated crop solutions to the farmer,” said Bayer CropScience president and CEO for North America Jim Blome. “We do it by continuing our research in small molecules, in seed and traits, and integrating that with innovations out of biologics.”
Blome says they jump started their presence in biologics with the acquisition of AgraQuest, Inc. in 2012. “We realized this is a growing trend so we invested heavily in this new facility to give our researchers plenty of room to bring plenty of innovation to the ag markets.”
The new West Sacramento site has the capacity to house up to 300 employees and they are almost halfway there already, most of which were already with the company at the previous smaller facility nearby at UC Davis. Interview with Bayer CropScience North America president and CEO Jim Blome