BASF’s Agricultural Products division head, Michael Heinz, has said that the ever-increasing demands upon growers and farmers has meant that there is a constant call for innovative crop protection active ingredients.

Heinz’s division reported that higher demand helped it to offset both a three percent sales penalty from adverse currency conversions and a two percent sales erosion from last year’s disinvestments. For the whole of 2007, the division forecasts that it will see a rise in sales and earnings.

The division has reported that there are currently seven active ingredients in the phase of market introduction, with a peak sales potential of one billion euros, and numerous active ingredients in the development stage with additional peak sales potential of 800 million euros.

“We don’t need to shrink from comparison with the competition,” Heinz asserted. “We regard our research and development - in terms of both the rate of innovation and efficiency - to be clearly at the forefront. And we will do everything to keep it there in the future.”

The division has also involved itself in numerous other projects to assist growers, it said, such as products to grow strawberries in Spain, table grapes in Turkey and salad in the UK.

Regarding the controversial EU pesticide proposals, the firm’s head of European crop protection business, Klaus Welsch, called for ‘far-sighted political treatment’, stressing that growers require ‘readily available, innovative and secure solutions.’

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