Crystal Crop Protection Ltd expects to be among the top ten seed companies in the country with the recent acquisition of seed brands from Bayer CropScience.

Crystal Crop acquired cotton, mustard, pearl millet and sorghum hybrid seed brands from Bayer for an undisclosed sum recently.

“The acquisition will place us among the top ten seed companies in the country,” said Ankur Aggarwal, Managing Director, Crystal Crop Ltd. With this buyout, the seed business of Crystal Crop will expand from around ₹75 crore to about ₹300 crore.

The Bayer deal is the third such acquisition done by Crystal Crop in the seed sector. It had acquired Rohini Seeds in 2011 and Syngenta’s Indian sorghum and pearl millet business in 2018.

In the millets segment, Crystal Crop will be among the top three players with the latest acquisition expanding its share to around 15 per cent of the estimated market of 16,000 tonnes of pearl millets, Aggarwal said.

In sorghum hybrids, Crystal Crop is the market leader, Aggarwal said adding that the company continues to have a presence in the maize hybrids. “We continue to sell around 1500 tonnes of maize seeds,” he said.

Similarly, in mustard, Crystal expects to be among the top 3-4 players selling hybrids. “Mustard is an exciting opportunity and some of the new hybrids are very promising. We are looking to expand this many folds from here, probably looking at coming to the leadership position,” Aggarwal said. Crystal Crop is working around 5-6 mustard hybrids, of which two are likely to be launched in the next year.

In the hybrid mustard seed market of around 6,000 tonnes, Crystal Crop will expand its share to around 15 per cent.

The buyout of Bayer’s Surpass brand has helped Crystal Crop bulk up its hybrid cotton seeds business and increase its market share from one per cent to five per cent of the estimated 18,800 tonnes. “Our cotton seed business will be sizeable. We would be among the five to seven companies with market of 1.5-2 million packets,” he said.

Further, Aggarwal said the acquired brands would contribute to around 10 per cent of the Crystal Crop’s revenues from next financial year. Crystal Crop had clocked revenues of ₹2,050 crore during 2020-21, bulk of it coming from the crop protection business.

Strengthening R&D

As part of the deal, in addition to the seed brands, the entire breeding programme, research and development facilities and about 45 member R&D team has also been transferred to Crystal.

“Our R&D strength would be close to 60-65 people in total in seed business, while we have another 30-35 people in crop protection business,” Aggarwal said adding that the company would continue to focus its R&D on the existing field crops and strengthen its position in these categories.

Meanwhile, in its dominant crop protection business, Crystal Crop is expanding its technical manufacturing capabilities to reduce its dependence on China. The company has invested around ₹100 crore in a seven acres greenfield technicals manufacturing facility in Dahej for herbicides. “We expect to begin production in our Dahej facility from February 1, 2022,” Aggarwal said.

Crystal Crop has two other facilities in Nagpur and near Sonipat in Haryana, where it manufactures insecticides and fungicides. The company is also investing around ₹100 crore in these two facilities, he said.

The company has a total of 76-odd crop protection products including 30 insecticides, 24 herbicides, 13 fungicides and nine bio-stimulants. Aggarwal said the company’s crop protection business has been growing higher than the industry average and clocked a compounded annual growth rate of 15 per cent in the past 5 years.

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