MORRISVILLE – Nufarm Americas has its roots “down under,” but it’s happy to do some of its growing up in the Old North State.

The North American subsidiary of Australia’s Nufarm Limited, one of the world’s largest crop protection companies, Nufarm Americas is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, Illinois. It conducts R&D, regulatory and marketing activities in Morrisville. That site has about 30 employees who also run a laboratory, including chemists who focus on the last stage of product formulation development.

The company is more than 100 years old. “That’s a little bit of an anomaly in the biotech space,” laughed Ken Barham, vice president of customer and brand marketing at the Morrisville site, during an interview with NCBiotech.

Nufarm

Founded in 1915 in New Zealand, it became Nufarm 40 years later, based in Australia. Now it’s the eighth largest crop protection company worldwide, with 3,500 employees globally, about 300 of them in the U.S.

Nufarm offers a diversified product portfolio that includes herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and plant growth regulators.

Barham said after Nufarm made a Triangle-area acquisition in the early 2000s, the company became increasingly impressed with ag biotech talent pool in the region. That, and proximity to North Carolina State and other major universities, were key factors in Nufarm’s growth in North Carolina.

The attraction of the Triangle workforce includes sales, marketing and regulatory expertise and the solid base of other life science companies based here. “There is a significant concentration of people with these skills here.”

The Morrisville team, expanding by about three people a year, includes experts in long-term strategic planning and regulatory issues, and the company’s customer-facing office. “Here, we primarily focus on key North American markets,” Barham said. “Corn, soybeans, cotton and specialty segments that include golf, lawncare operators and greenhouse/nursery products.”

Day to day, Barham said, “We’re dealing with geopolitical issues and continue to identify solutions for growers and meeting the challenges and needs they face daily.” One of Nufarm’s sweet spots, he said, is looking for innovative ways to improve existing technology and provide it to growers economically.

One of Nufarm’s “leading missions in North Carolina,” he added, is to help soybean growers control weeds with its Panther brand family introduced three years ago. “It is a nice fit for soybean growers.”

North Carolina ranks nationally in soybean crops, which are often planted in June after winter wheat has been harvested so farmers get a double crop from their acres.

Helps battle rain-activated insect pests

Barham said Nufarm also has products that fit the disease spectrum after an event such as a hurricane, when insect pests may be driven from the ground after heavy rains.

Ken Barham

Nufarm plans to open a $20 million manufacturing plant in Greenville, Miss., by summer 2019, helping growers through the Carolinas and Virginia, he said.

Despite Bayer’s recent acquisition of Monsanto and subsequent location of that business in St. Louis, Barham sees North Carolina as a major hub for the industry.

“Most people still see the Research Triangle as the center of agriculture and crop protection technology globally,” Barham said.

In addition to its major players in the sector, including Syngenta, BASF and Novozymes, North Carolina is a magnet for agricultural entrepreneurship, he added.

“Startups are bringing technology to the industry that will allow Raleigh and the RTP to be the leader in biotech well into the future.”

(C) N.C. Biotechnology Center