Latin America Windfall for Crop Protection Makers in Q3
1 November 2011 Latin America was a vital source of strength for crop protection companies in the most recent earnings period as players like Syngenta, DuPont and Dow reported big sales and volumes gains for the region.
The Dow Chemical Company posted its best-ever third-quarter sales for its Agricultural Sciences unit, totaling $1.2 billion, up 27% from a year earlier, led by Latin America. Sales volumes and prices for the unit climbed 18% and 9%, respectively. Higher farm incomes are giving farmers more incentive to boost yields, the American company said.
Syngenta reported robust third-quarter sales, powered by Latin America. High soybean crop prices and expected lower production in the US are leading soybean growers to buy up crop protection products and seed in Brazil and Argentina, the Swiss company said. Early orders in the US, where solutions for weed resistance in corn and soybean are increasingly in demand, also helped boost sales, it said.
Growth in corn and soybeans was driven by Latin America, Syngenta said, on strong acceptance of new products including its Viptera corn trait. Soybean seed sales more than doubled in the region, it said. The company posted a sharp 39% gain in new crop protection product sales to $484 million for the first nine months of the year.
DuPont reported higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings, also powered by strength in Latin American agricultural product sales, leading the American chemical manufacturing giant to boost its profit outlook for the year.
Sales in both the company’s agriculture unit and the Latin America region as a whole easily outperformed DuPont’s other business segments. The company posted a 41% jump in agriculture sales to $1.4 billion, buoyed by pricing and volume growth.
DuPont said its Pioneer corn and soybean seeds posted both volume and price growth during the quarter. Crop protection sales increased across all regions and market segments, it said, led by continued strong demand for Rynaxypyr insecticide.
BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, also said its Agricultural Solutions unit sales beat the year-ago period.
The “very successful start to the season” in South America, increased sales in all regions and higher prices helped offset negative currency effects during the quarter, Chief Executive Kurt Bock said in a statement.
Germany-based BASF said it expects positive trends to continue in the fourth quarter, but lowered its view for worldwide growth in GDP, industrial and chemical production by just under one percentage point from its previous forecast.
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