Sustaining Leadership
11 December 2008 For three consecutive years, Syngenta’s Brazilian arm, Syngenta Proteção de Cultivos, has reigned as the crop protection leader in the highly desired Brazilian market. And while the company followed a growth strategy built on understanding and anticipating the needs of its customers and offering the products and services to respond to those needs, Syngenta’s strategy in Brazil runs deeper than numbers.
“Agriculture is one of the main drivers of the Brazilian economy and we are aware of our responsibility towards the food production chain — from farmers to end consumers,” says Laércio Giampani, general director of crop protection at Syngenta Brazil. “We know it is vital to maintain elevated standards for health, safety, and the environment.”
Meeting Market Needs
Syngenta’s ability to meet the needs of the Brazilian market begins with its portfolio of crop protection products. The company notes that its herbicide line is the most innovative in the market, and its insecticide line is the broadest. In addition, Syngenta says its line of seed treatments pioneered the concept of “vigor and productivity” with products such as the successful Cruiser (thiamethoxam), which provides control of a wide range of early season sucking and chewing, leaf-feeding and soil-dwelling insect pests such as aphids, wireworms, flea beetles, and leafminers.
Syngenta also offers a portfolio of fungicide products to fight Asian soybean rust disease, highlighted by Priori-Xtra (cyproconazole + azoxystrobin), which has received a 100% satisfaction rating from customers who have used it.
In other crops, including coffee and sugarcane, the company’s thiamethoxam-based Verdadero and Actara are also leading products, both of which are now available in liquid formulations to facilitate handling and security in applications.
Beyond Products
These and numerous other products are current growth engines, and the company notes that more are on the way. Syngenta is investing US $400 million in the Brazilian market between now and 2012, during which time it plans to introduce 15 new products to the market.
This diverse and well-rounded offering is part of what makes the company confident that its growth rate will exceed the rapid pace of the Brazilian market itself, which is expected to maintain a 10% growth rate.
Of course, products mean nothing without market access, which has been another key element in the strategy that took Syngenta to the top. The company states that the ultimate goal is to focus on the customer, taking solutions to growers. To accomplish this, it has pioneered the concept of segmenting its business into logical clusters that reflect grower needs, and it has consolidated its distribution network in order to ensure that the right products are available to the customers who need them.
Responsible Business
Building a successful business is one element of Syngenta’s overall strategy, but as Giampani points out, it is not the only one. “We don’t worry about growing faster than the market,” he says. “We want to build a company with longevity and sustainability.”
Building the company envisioned by Syngenta leadership begins with a staff that is professional, talented, and kept happy enough to stay with the company and buy into its corporate mission.
Syngenta’s approximately 900-person staff is all of those things. The company says that its workers “understand our goal and are involved and excited with the business.” It is right; in 2007, Brazil’s Exame magazine named Syngenta one of the 105 best companies to work for in the country.
To help develop its staff, the company has a clear strategy for professional growth to help each member of the team achieve its results. And, to measure its results, the company conducts its own internal working climate survey. In the last survey given to its employees, Syngenta reports that 98% of its team answered that they understand the company’s strategy. Moreover, the company is pleased to note that 97% of its staff stated in the same survey that they are proud to work at Syngenta.
Sustaining Momentum
The company realizes that for long-term success, one cannot conduct business that is exploitative or detrimental to its market environment. On the other hand, if a company contributes to the continued success and growth of the market it serves, both the market and the company can share the rewards.
Of particular emphasis for Syngenta Brazil is the protection and promotion of the environment. The company boasts around a dozen separate projects to promote environmentalism in the country. Among its more notable successes are:
- A “School on the Field” project which has raised environmental awareness among more than 370,000 school-age youths.
- The “Live Water” project, which has restored more than 1,400 water sources since its inception in 2004.
- The “More Beans” project, which provides support for small farmers to improve their productivity, yield, and quality of life. In this project, soybean productivity was, on average, two times higher than the state average, and 3.3 times higher than the national average. At the same time, average corn productivity was 1.9 times higher than the state average and 2.5 times higher than the national average, according to a study of the 2006/07 crop.
As Giampani puts it, “Syngenta has a strong commitment towards corporate responsibility and full conviction that, in order to gain in a sustained manner and add value to the business, its activities need to progress in integration with the environment and society, which means sustainability.”
Get The Newsletter Today!
