Agri-Genetics Giant Pioneer To Set Up Shop

Sources connected with the venture told Business Standard that Pioneer through its overseas arm, Pioneer Overseas Corporation, will bring in a `fairly substantial investment' to beef up its Indian operations which includes research and development division. The company early this month filed an application with Foreign Investment Promotion Board.

Pioneer Hi-Bred, a Dupont company, already has a joint venture company in India with Spic, called the Spic-PHI Seeds Ltd which sells seeds of proprietary Pioneer bran corn and sunflower hybrids, and grain sorghum, pearl millet, rice and mustard.

According to the FIPB application, the wholly-owned subsidiary will upgrade the Pioneer's branch in India, enhance the working relationship with the joint venture, will have the option to have a board, develop better and larger quantity of parent/ foundation seeds and pre-commercial hybrid seeds so that there is a constant and assured supply of parent seeds to the joint venture company.

 

Founded in 1926, Pioneer is based in Iowa in the US. It develops, produces, and markets a full line of seeds, microbial products and services to grain and livestock producers, grain processors, and other customers in over 120 countries worldwide.

The company also markets and sells hybrids or improved varieties of sorghum, sunflower, soybean, alfalfa, canola and wheat, as well as forage and grain additives. Worldwide, Pioneer sells products through a variety of organisations, including wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures, sales representatives, and independent dealers. The group operates more than 110 primary research locations involved in developing and testing new products.

Pioneer's hybrids and varieties are developed at primary research locations and tested at thousands of other locations to ensure that these products are adapted to a wide range of growing environments.

Pioneer's supply management group is responsible for collecting forecasting information from the company's operations around the world and ensuring a constant supply of product that enhances the company's ability to be a reliable supplier of high quality genetics worldwide.

This group determines how much seed is needed to meet demand, decides where that seed should be grown, produces the seed, and manages inventory, quality assurance and distribution.

Supply management operates 73 Pioneer production locations around the world, which grow, condition and distribute seed products. Pioneer Hi-Bred also has a variety of support operations including information management, value-added services, and real estate management. Pioneer employs approximately 5,000 people worldwide.

Dupont and Pioneer recently went through a stock and cash merger with Dupont acquiring the 80 per cent of Pioneer not currently owned by it.

The corporate strategy of the merged company has been to strengthen and accelerate the company's capability to discover, develop and commercialize a new generation of products across the value chains for food and feed crops, food ingredients, industrial applications and nutrition science.

Dupont is a science company, delivering science-based solutions which employees 97,000 people in 65 countries.