BS Reporter |
Hyderabad
August 6, 2007
Last Updated at 00:00 IST
Isagro Asia to expand Gujarat facility
| Isagro Asia Agrochemicals, a subsidiary of ¤300 million Italian company Isagro, is investing Rs 50 crore to expand its agrochemical manufacturing facility in Panoli, Gujarat.
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| The Rs 150 crore Mumbai-based company is also setting up research and product development facilities in the country to commercialise the new molecules being developed in Italy by its parent company. Partho S Lahiri, managing director, Isagro Asia, said the parent company had decided to develop and manufacture all its new products in India.
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| New products contribute 80 per cent of Isagro's business operations, while just 20 per cent comes from generics manufacturing, according to him. The company produces a variety of insecticides, herbicides and bio-stimulators.
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| "As such, 50 per cent of Isagro Asia's business comes from exports. We hope to increase the exports across Asia on the back of ongoing expansion of our manufacturing facilities," he said here today. "The company is setting up a pilot plant for research and product development besides an agronomical research facility for screening new products as a continuation of basic product research being done in Italy," he said.
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| The company first established its operations in India in 2001 by acquiring the agrochemical businesses of Searle India.
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| Apart from the existing brands such as Rogon and Siapton, it has newly launched a mitecide under the brand name, Mitigate, targeting tea and chilli crops. It has also sought the approval of central government agencies to launch a similar product for coconut in the country and is currently working on a herbicide product for paddy.
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| Lahiri said the approval of new agrochemical products was very slow in India, adversely affecting crop management resulting in huge losses to farmers.
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| "So far, only 200 products were registered in India compared with 460 products in Vietnam," he said, adding that the new formulations have been much more eco-friendly in their chemical composition than the conventional pesticides.
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| The company hopes to increase its revenues by 10 per cent during the current year and targets to achieve Rs 300 crore turnover by 2011-12. |
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