Invest KOREA

At Syngenta Korea, it begins and ends in the field.

That’s where all employees, including managers, spend many of their days. They train farmers to use Syngenta’s technologies. They talk to growers and learn of their needs. They obtain the seed, no pun intended, behind ideas like the remote-controlled helicopters that fly up and down fields spraying pesticides. Syngenta Korea came up with this technology to solve the ongoing challenge facing growers of high labor costs and an aging farmer population.

“Growers’ pain point is our starting point,” said Stephan Titze, the president of Syngenta Korea. “Solving growers’ pain point is our responsibility, a core part of our strategy.”

With the mission to “help farmers grow more from less,” Syngenta provides agribusiness solutions to enable sustainable farming. A leading world developer and supplier of seeds and pesticides, the Switzerland-based Syngenta was formed through the merger of the agribusiness divisions of Novartis and AstraZeneca in 2000.

Syngenta Korea traces its roots back to the 1970s, to the Korean companies Oriental Chemical Industries and Seoul Seed, which Novartis acquired in 1998 and 1997, respectively. Today Syngenta Korea produces about 150 seed varieties, including those for hot pepper, tomato, paprika, Oriental radish and Oriental cabbage, and about 80 crop protection products including insecticides, fungicides and herbicides.

“Hot pepper is one of our key products. We understand that Korean people obviously love their kimchi and they love hot pepper...” said Titze. “We tend to develop the products that fit the local markets.”

Titze, also the Head of the Northeast Asia Territory for Syngenta, says helping farmers in Korea grow more from less involves not just increasing yields from an existing agricultural area, but using inputs and resources that have less of an impact on the environment. Korea imports about 75 percent of its food and the government is trying to reduce this number through promoting sustainable agriculture.

“So I guess we see very much our role [is to] optimize production in Korea so that Korea can be as self-sufficient as it can be,” Titze said.

Korea being one of the world’s largest consumers of vegetables, it’s no surprise Syngenta Korea boasts a strong vegetable seed and crop protection product portfolio. It does not sell rice seeds, but the company aims to strengthen its performance in this market by developing new crop protection products for rice. Its main customers include NongHyup, which is the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, and private channels. Syngenta Korea has also collaborated with local companies and institutions, recently entering into a memorandum of understanding with Sejong University to develop a radish variety for the Korean and Asian markets.
“For us, technology and collaborations [are] very critical for success,” said Titze.

Syngenta Korea, which exports about 30 percent of its products, is also involved in biotechnology and genomic research. The company offers growers services and application technologies, including the remote-controlled helicopter, an advanced farming method used in Korea and Japan. With Syngenta investing $1 billion a year into research and development worldwide, innovation is key to business. For Titze’s staff, Korea’s leading IT industry has only increased the possibilities.

Syngenta has thus far invested a total of about $200 million in Korea, plus about $30 million for infrastructure development. It was Korea’s largest foreign investor in the agricultural sector during the IMF crisis, said Titze, and will continue to invest in its high-value Korea operations.

“As we say, people always have to eat, so we believe over the next year or so, we will see significant change,” he said.