The company had said last November it wasn’t yet sure those products would be available this year under an approaching deadline following a 2021 re-evaluation of lambda-cy by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA).

The PMRA’s re-evaluation decision cancelled the product’s uses on all feed crops, condiment-type mustard, bulb vegetables, lettuce and some oilseeds effective 24 months from its decision date, thus setting a deadline of April 29, 2023.

The list of affected oilseed crops does not include canola/rapeseed, flax or oilseed mustard — but the ruling would prohibit those crops’ use as livestock feed.

Adama said Wednesday its decision to relabel the products “comes after several months of consulting with retailers, farmers and industry organizations on the implications” of the PMRA re-evaluation.

“After a great deal of discussion and consideration, we have confidence in our retail partners to provide good advice to growers and we trust growers themselves to use the product responsibly and within permitted guidelines,” Adama Canada general manager Cornie Thiessen said in a release.

“The bottom line for growers is to read the labeling guidelines carefully. Talk to your full-service input retailer and to your crop buyers so you can make an informed decision about if and when to apply the product.”

Adama had said in November the cancellation of lambda-cy’s use on crops destined for feed was especially raising red flags for farmers, who “have questioned whether it is feasible to use the product at all considering how difficult it is to trace where crops will be used after they leave the farm.”

READ MORE:

• How to manage without lambda-cyhalothrin in 2023
• Farmers discuss how lambda-cyhalothrin regulation changes will affect them in 2023
• Insecticide restriction pushes growers to older chemistries

Lambda-cy is a Group 3 synthetic pyrethroid contact insecticide used to control a broad range of pests at their small larvae nymph and adult stages.

Other products affected by the PMRA’s ruling include Syngenta’s insecticides Matador, Voliam Xpress, Endigo, Warrior and Demand CS, Intervet Canada’s Saber pour-on and ear tag products and Sharda Cropchem’s Labamba insecticide.

Syngenta, like Adama, launched a product recall to “amend existing labels” ahead of the April 29, 2023 deadline.

However, Syngenta also said in November it has decided not to sell lambda-cy products at all in Western Canada in 2023, though it will continue to sell Matador in “horticultural markets” in Eastern Canada.

Syngenta said via email that decision was meant “to avoid any confusion and to support 2023 business planning with our customers.”

It also said it had filed a submission to PMRA seeking reinstatement of as many livestock feed crop uses as possible and “will continue to support this submission until completed.”

Provincial agriculture ministers from Saskatchewan and Alberta last month also called for PMRA to reconsider its re-evaluation decision, saying it “leaves farmers with one fewer tool to address potentially destructive pests.”

Grasshoppers, in particular, are likely to be a significant concern again this year following “continued drought” in parts of those provinces, ministers David Marit and Nate Horner said in a statement.

The PMRA decision “could also mean the inability for canola producers to sell their products as livestock feed, which could impact availability for cattle and lamb producers,” the ministers said.

Horner and Marit said they have written to the federal health and agriculture ministers urging them to encourage the PMRA to reconsider.

“It is possible for the PMRA to enact an emergency reinstatement of the product’s use to ensure our farmers can use it for the coming growing season and give it time to make a more informed decision, but we would need that immediately,” the ministers said.

“With extreme flea beetle pressure, hotspots for grasshoppers and cutworms across the Prairies and forecasted outbreaks, the lambda-cyhalothrin decision could severely impact our yields, our livelihoods, feedstocks and food prices,” Alberta Canola chair Roger Chevraux and SaskCanola chair Keith Fournier said in the provinces’ joint release on Feb. 24.

“Lambda-cyhalothrin has a significant market share, and it will strain farmers to source alternative products.”

Noting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not imposed similar restrictions on lambda-cy use, the canola grower commission chairs said PMRA “needs to base its decisions on sound science and be aligned with our largest trading partner.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Most agricultural uses of imidacloprid — sold by Bayer under brands such as Gaucho, Merit and Admire, and by Adama under brands such as Alias and Sombrero — will remain available, the department said Wednesday.

Health Canada’s final decision steps back from its proposed re-evaluation decision in 2016, under which phase-outs were proposed for all agricultural and most non-agricultural uses of the chemical.

At that time, the department’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) had cited “risks to aquatic organisms” such as mayflies and midges, which in turn are important food sources for fish, birds and other animals.

Since then, however, Health Canada said Wednesday, comments and “new data/information received” led to revisions of its occupational and environmental risk assessments and “resulted in changes to the proposed re-evaluation decision.”

Risks to bees and other pollinators from imidacloprid were covered off in a separate final re-evaluation decision in 2019, but “mitigation measures put in place as a result of the pollinator re-evaluation are taken into consideration in this re-evaluation decision.”

The changes announced Wednesday will mean new labels for most imidacloprid-based products in ground, aerial and seed treatments for crops, general pest-control sprays and bait stations, and veterinary treatments for use on dogs, cats and other pets.

They also mean outright cancellation for a few currently-registered products, including Bayer’s Merit Granular and Merit Solupack wettable powder, Adama’s Quali-Pro 0.5 Granular and Quali-Pro 75 WSP wettable powder, and SBM’s BioAdvanced granular grub control.

Revised rates

The final re-evaluation released Wednesday will cut the maximum allowed application rates for imidacloprid on several crops, including:

• seed treatment for field corn, to 13 grams of active ingredient (g a.i.) per 80,000 seeds;
• seed treatment for sweet corn, to 67.2 g a.i. per 100 kg of seed;
• seed treatment for soybean, to 62.5 g a.i. per 100 kg of seed;
• seed treatment for lettuce, broccoli and cabbage, to treatment of seed for crops grown or started in greenhouses, with no direct seeding to fields permitted;
• foliar application for soybean, down to one application per season maximum, at a maximum application rate of 24.4 g a.i. per hectare; and
• foliar application for potato, legumes other than soybeans, and tobacco, down to one application per season maximum.

The new cuts to imidacloprid’s maximum application rates lead to outright cancellation for some previously-allowed uses, such as:

• seed treatment for corn flea beetle on field corn and sweet corn;
• seed treatment for direct field seeding of brassica vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage and leafy vegetables such as lettuce;
• in-furrow application on brassica, leafy and root and tuber vegetables, including potato;
• in-furrow application on tobacco;
• field application of tray plug drench application on leafy vegetables;
• foliar and granular application on turf;
• foliar application on lowbush blueberry; and
• soil drench application on brassica, leafy, and root and tuber vegetables, including potato (but not sugar beet), based on the usual row spacing for those crops against the revised maximum application rates.

Greenhouse uses, such as a soil drench or transplant tray plug drench, are still allowed as long as “measures are in place to prevent releases, effluent or runoff from greenhouses containing this product from entering lakes, streams, ponds, or other waters.” Greenhouses using imidacloprid in a closed recirculation or closed chemigation system will have to pass third-party audits.

Imidacloprid product labels must also be changed to require spray buffer zones, inform users of “potential toxic effects to sensitive biota” and make note of revised restrictions for use of treated seed, such as seed disposal instructions and a ban on broadcast seeding of treated seed, Health Canada said.

The final re-evaluation decision also calls for risk-reduction measures to protect workers and those who enter imidalcoprid-treated areas, including changes to personal protective equipment (PPE) and engineering controls for seed treatment uses.

It also called for restricted-entry intervals and/or spray drift precautions where not already included on labels, and “clarification that the use in greenhouses is not allowed for uses only registered for outdoor areas.”

All product label changes must be made within 24 months, Health Canada said. Companies holding the registrations for cancelled products may still sell those products for one year from the decision’s publication date, followed by a year of sale at retail, followed by a year of permitted use.

The one exception among cancelled uses is as a soil drench for control of European chafer on ginseng crops. Ginseng growers were “found to lack suitable alternatives,” Health Canada said, so that cancellation will be delayed for 24 months.

‘Safety profile’

Bayer CropScience Canada, in a statement Wednesday, said it’s running a “thorough review” of PMRA’s final decision “to better understand the full impact this will have on our customers and to see how we can best support any new required mitigation measures for applicators.”

Generally the company said it’s “pleased” that the decision will “keep the use of products containing imidacloprid in the hands of farmers who look to this vital technology to help protect their crop from invasive pests, in a responsible manner.”

The chemical’s approval for continued use “confirms that neonicotinoid treatments have a favourable safety profile for aquatic invertebrates and pollinators, when used according to label instructions,” the company said.

That said, Bayer added it’s “disappointed” that the decision will affect some farmers, “primarily those in the horticulture industry,” as well as professional turfgrass managers.

Several environmental groups on Wednesday protested PMRA’s final decision, saying the new label changes and restrictions are “not a credible approach to address the role of pesticides as a factor in the biodiversity crisis.”

In a joint release Wednesday, they said PMRA “lacks mechanisms to validate the numerous assumptions underlying its assessment of risks and does not systematically monitor pesticide use or concentrations in the environment.

“The lengthy delays that plague PMRA’s pesticide risk re-evaluation program are also a concern, allowing harmful pesticides to continue to contaminate the environment for years after problems are identified,” the groups said, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Friends of the Earth Canada, Environmental Defence, the Wilderness Committee, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Birds Canada and Ecojustice.

PMRA, they said, “delayed final decisions on neonics for two years while considering additional industry data and other information.”

“We have to ask if PMRA’s decision is free from stakeholder influence,” Beatrice Olivastri, CEO for Friends of the Earth Canada, said in the groups’ release.

“Five years ago, PMRA’s assessment showed imidacloprid posed unacceptable risks to aquatic insects based on water monitoring data from Environment and Climate Change Canada. So what happened to make them acceptable today?” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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In the first phase, it will buy 50 per cent of Shanghai Dibai Plant Protection, a wholly owned subsidiary of Huifeng focused on the sale of formulated crop protection products in China. This phase of the deal is expected to close in the coming weeks.

In the second phase Adama will buy a 51 per cent equity stake in Jiangsu Kelinong, a newly established, wholly owned subsidiary of Huifeng, to which Huifeng will transfer its key crop protection synthesis and formulation facilities. It will also buy another one per cent in Dibai.

Following these transactions, Adama will hold 51 per cent of both Kelinong and Dibai, providing it with a majority stake in one of China’s top crop protection manufacturers, Adama said.

Closing of the second phase is subject to full resumption of production at the relevant facilities of Huifeng, which is in the process of rectifying environmental issues and obtaining approvals to resume production.

“Through this acquisition, we continue to accelerate our growth strategy both in the Chinese market as well as globally,” Adama CEO Ignacio Dominguez said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tova Cohen.

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Chen Lichtenstein, current CEO of Shenzhen-listed crop protection company Adama, which will also be incorporated into the new group, will be nominated chief financial officer of the newly formed Syngenta Group.

He will be based in Basel, Switzerland, the Swiss group said in a statement.

Reuters reported last month that China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina, had approached Chinese state-backed investors for up to US$10 billion in funding as part of a reorganization of its agrichemicals business ahead of a public float.

The reorganization includes Syngenta, the Swiss pesticide producer that ChemChina agreed in 2016 to buy for US$43 billion.

The fundraising efforts and eventual stock market listing are designed to cut ChemChina’s debt ahead of a long-awaited mega-merger with state-owned peer Sinochem. Frank Ning, the chairman of both companies, has encouraged individual business units to tap capital markets ahead of any tie-up, which has been in the works since 2016.

ChemChina wants to list Syngenta on China’s technology-focused STAR market in mid-2020, according to fundraising documents dated from October.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michael Shields.

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The deal, announced in February 2016, was prompted by China’s desire to use Syngenta’s portfolio of top-tier chemicals and patent-protected seeds to improve domestic agricultural output. It is China’s biggest foreign takeover to date.

It is one of several deals that are remaking the international market for agricultural chemicals, seeds and fertilizers.

The other deals in the sector are a US$130 billion proposed merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont, and Bayer’s plan to merge with Monsanto. The trend toward market consolidation has triggered fears among farmers that the pipeline for new herbicides and pesticides might slow. Regulators have required some divestments as a condition for approving the Syngenta deal.

Based on preliminary numbers, around 80.7 per cent of Syngenta shares have been tendered, above the minimum threshold of 67 per cent support, the partners said in a joint statement.

The agreed offer is for US$465 per share. Syngenta shares closed on Thursday at 459 Swiss francs (C$639.64).

The transaction is set to close May 18 after the start of an additional acceptance period for shareholders and payment of a special five-franc dividend to holders of Swiss-listed shares on May 16. Holders of U.S.-listed depositor receipts will get the special dividend in July.

Syngenta shares will be delisted from the Swiss bourse and its depository receipts from the New York Stock Exchange.

CEO Erik Fyrwald played down the transition from publicly-listed group to becoming part of a Chinese state enterprise, stressing that Syngenta would remain a Swiss-based global company while under Chinese ownership.

“It is very important to understand that this is a financial transaction,” he told broadcaster CNBC in an interview.

He saw two major changes: giving Syngenta a long-term shareholder to accompany it during the 12 years it typically takes to discover and launch new products, and helping to overhaul Chinese agriculture, which he called very much behind the global standard.

He said he expected the acceptance rate to easily surpass 90 per cent, with a squeeze-out of remaining shareholders to follow if needed in June.

Funding for the acquisition was clear and irrevocable, while refinancing the company after the transaction closed was still being discussed.

“I am very confident we are going to have a strong balance sheet as agreed,” he said, with an investment-grade rating that would let it pursue market share growth, investments, capital spending and acquisitions.

Syngenta sells its crop protection products in more than 90 countries including Canada under brand names including Axial, Cruiser, Matador and Quadris. It also sells seeds such as cereals, corn, rice, soybeans and vegetables.

ChemChina’s holdings include ag chem manufacturer Adama, which markets mainly off-patent crop protection products in Canada and over 100 other countries.

Among the countries whose regulators’ approval was required, Canada signed off on the Syngenta deal with a “no action” letter from its Competition Bureau in February.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michael Shields. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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The deal is one of several reshaping the agricultural chemicals and seeds market, even as these deals trigger fears among some farmers that bigger, more powerful suppliers could be better placed to push up prices and economize on developing new herbicides and pesticides.

Reuters reported on Feb. 2 that the deal, the largest foreign acquisition by a Chinese company, would be cleared with conditions.

The European Commission said planned asset sales would address its competition concerns.

“It is important for European farmers and ultimately consumers that there will be effective competition in pesticide markets, also after ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

ChemChina will sell a large chunk of its subsidiary Adama’s pesticide, herbicides and insecticides business, its seed treatment products for cereals and sugar beet and a substantial part of its plant growth regulator business for cereals.

American Vanguard (Amvac) said it struck a deal with Adama to acquire three crop protection product lines, without disclosing financial terms.

Bernstein Research analyst Jeremy Redenius said that since Adama focuses on established crop chemicals that have lost patent protection, potential buyers of other assets would likely be from the same industry segment, such as FMC, Nufarm and Sumitomo Chemical.

Redenius added that BASF was unlikely to bid due to its focus on patented substances.

BASF and FMC declined to comment. Australia’s Nufarm and Japan’s Sumitomo were not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.

Syngenta said the EU’s go-ahead was a major step toward closing the transaction, expected in the second quarter of 2017.

Some of Syngenta’s pesticides will also be put on the block. The world No. 1 pesticides maker sells its products in more than 90 countries under such brand names as Acuron, Axial, Beacon and Callisto. It sells seeds such as cereals, corn, rice, soybeans and vegetables.

U.S. antitrust authorities also nodded the deal through on Tuesday on condition ChemChina divests three products. Canada’s Competition Bureau signed off on the deal in February.

According to a Syngenta spokesperson, the last remaining countries to provide regulatory clearance on the deal include China, India and Mexico.

The EU’s approval came a week after it cleared the US$130 billion Dow Chemical and DuPont merger in return for hefty asset sales, including global research and development facilities.

— Foo Yun Chee is a Reuters correspondent covering competition issues from Brussels. Additional reporting for Reuters by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt.

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To win approval for the $43 billion deal, the companies agreed to divest ChemChina’s generic production of the herbicide paraquat, the insecticide abamectin used for citrus and tree nuts and the fungicide chlorothalonil, used for peanut and potato crops (all figures US$).

The settlement with the FTC calls for ChemChina’s Adama arm to sell its U.S. paraquat, abamectin and chlorothalonil businesses to California-based chemical firm Amvac.

Adama doesn’t market products with any of the three active ingredients in Canada, where Syngenta holds active registrations on all three.

Canada’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Bureau, in February issued a “no action” letter on ChemChina’s Syngenta takeover, saying a deal was “unlikely to result in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition” in the Canadian pesticide market.

Syngenta had $13.4 billion in sales in the U.S. in 2015, according to a report the company put out last year.

The deal was prompted by China’s desire to use Syngenta’s portfolio of top-tier chemicals and patent-protected seeds to improve domestic agricultural output. The country is the world’s largest agricultural market.

The deal is one of several that is remaking the market for agricultural chemicals, seeds and fertilizers. The trend toward market consolidation has triggered fears among farmers that the pipeline for new herbicides and pesticides might slow.

The other deals in the sector are a $130 billion proposed merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont and Bayer’s plan to merge with Monsanto. On the fertilizer front, PotashCorp has announced plans to merge with Agrium.

— Diane Bartz is a Reuters correspondent covering antitrust issues from Washington, D.C. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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The Competition Bureau on Tuesday issued a “no action” letter for the takeover of Syngenta by China National Chemical Corp. (ChemChina), saying the deal is “unlikely to result in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition for the supply of pesticides in Canada.”

Even in cases where Syngenta and ChemChina’s Adama arm have competing products on the Canadian market, the bureau said its investigation shows there would still be “sufficient competition from existing or new products to constrain prices.”

State-owned ChemChina in February 2016 announced its friendly US$43 billion bid for Syngenta, which if successful would be the biggest-ever foreign acquisition by a Chinese company.

Several countries’ regulators have already signed off on the deal but approvals are pending from certain agencies in the U.S., the European Union, Brazil, India and Mexico, among others.

Syngenta Canada, based in Guelph, operates research facilities across the country and sells cereal, corn, canola and soybean seeds along with its portfolio of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

Formerly known as Mana Canada, Winnipeg-based Adama Canada sells off-patent or “generic” pesticide products, has no research facilities in Canada and is a “relatively recent entrant” in the Canadian market, the bureau noted.

“Lack of substitutability”

The bureau, looking at Syngenta’s and Adama’s crop chemical product overlap, found “a lack of substitutability between the parties’ products” and noted “the presence of effective remaining competitors (and) the potential entry of further competitors.”

Considering “a variety of plausible product market definitions,” the bureau said it concluded the merger “was not likely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition under any of the definitions considered.”

Under Canada’s regulatory regime for crop chemicals, the bureau said, the geographic market for pesticides is “likely national” and farmers can only substitute between pesticides labelled for a particular pest/crop combination they want to treat.

“Although various products may be labelled for the same pest/crop combinations, whether farmers will substitute among those products depends on their actual or perceived characteristics.”

In one example of overlap, the bureau pointed to Syngenta’s broad-spectrum crop insecticide Matador and Adama’s generic version, Silencer, which together “are among the most frequently used crop insecticides in Canada, particularly for canola.”

The two products, the bureau said, “are chemically equivalent, have nearly identical labels, compete for shelf space and are viewed by many farmers as interchangeable. No other manufacturer currently offers a product based on this active ingredient in Canada.”

All that said, the bureau noted, Bayer CropScience offers Decis, which is “viewed as a close substitute to Matador and Silencer” and “can be used on most of the same pest/crop combinations as the parties’ products, including all of the most recurrent insects for canola.”

The “presence of these current competitors” — plus a generic version of Decis that just picked up registration in September — and “the threat and anticipated entry of future competitors” led the bureau to its conclusion.

No turf war in turf

Meanwhile in the turf chemical market, the bureau also noted “instances of competitive rivalry between Syngenta’s branded products and Adama’s generic versions of the same products.”

However, the bureau said, Adama is “not likely significantly constraining Syngenta’s pricing.”

Market contacts have also told the bureau that end users of turf pesticides “place an additional premium on the value‑added services offered by branded companies,” which also include BASF and Bayer.

This notion, the bureau said, “is supported by Adama’s difficulty in gaining significant market share, despite offering discounted pricing on generics.”

Besides, the bureau said, Bayer, BASF and smaller players such as Nufarm and Engage Agro also offer “proprietary products that have a similar price point and disease profile to the parties’ products and would therefore continue to offer effective remaining competition in this space.” — AGCanada.com Network

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“We have filed an HSR Act with the FTC after good communications with the case team. We believe the U.S. anti-trust process is on track,” ChemChina said in an email, referring to the U.S. antitrust Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees mergers.

A Syngenta spokesperson also confirmed the companies had recently submitted the transaction to the FTC after a constructive engagement with the authorities.

“ChemChina and Syngenta remain fully committed to the transaction and are confident of its closure,” Syngenta said.

Sources close to the deal expected an approval soon, given the small revenue that ChemChina generates from the U.S. via Adama, a maker of generic versions of pesticides without patent protection, and its minor overlap with Syngenta products.

The deal has already won approvals from regulators in several markets, including a U.S. national security panel and Australia’s competition watchdog.

Earlier this month, companies proposed minor concessions to the European Commission’s competition watchdog with one source close to the deal estimating the overall divestment from Adama at less than US$500 million.

Recently, the European Commission extended the deal review to April 12, and a top Syngenta executive said earlier this week that it was “highly optimistic that by the date we will have made sufficient progress in the U.S. and EU to be going forward.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Chen Aizhu; additional reporting by Reuters’ Zurich newsroom.

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“Adama will not need to be sold. There will be some remedies in both the U.S. and the EU but I can’t speak to any details,” Erik Fyrwald told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Unveiling details about Syngenta’s future role within ChemChina for the first time, Fyrwald also said Israel-based Adama, a maker of generic versions of pesticides without patent protection, would not be folded into Syngenta, allowing the Swiss group to focus on biotech research in China and elsewhere.

The companies are working to finalize agreements with regulators in the U.S. and European Union about the US$43 billion takeover, which would be the largest outbound acquisition by a Chinese company.

Sources close to the matter told Reuters last week that ChemChina and Syngenta had proposed minor concessions to the EU’s competition watchdog, with one person saying it was unlikely Adama Agricultural Solutions would have to be divested.

The EU Commission recently extended its review of the deal to April 12 and Fyrwald said he was “highly optimistic that by that time, we’ll have made sufficient progress in the U.S. and EU to be going forward”.

Adama would continue to be managed separately because “we’re an R&D company and they’re a generic company. There are different business models”, he added.

Instead, Syngenta would drive an expansion of plant biotech research in China ahead of an expected easing of regulatory limits.

China has not yet permitted the cultivation of biotech food crops but its plan for science and technology to 2020, published last August, unveiled the country’s far-reaching ambitions in genetically engineered agriculture to secure food supplies.

“We will increase the research that we do in China both for China and for the world,” Fyrwald said, adding this would not come at the expense of Syngenta’s research efforts elsewhere.

Fyrwald suggested China could become a hub in the development of new gene editing procedures that refrain from using bits of genetic code from different species.

Under the conventional transgenic approach, a bacteria’s bug-killing ability has, for instance, been commonly used for many GMO crops.

Echoing a familiar campaign in the seeds industry to overcome consumer fears about genetically-modified foods which also exist in China, Fyrwald said new technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 would instead draw on a plant’s existing genome.

“There are rapidly advancing technologies that would not be considered GMO, where you don’t have to bring genes from other organisms.”

— Martinne Geller is a Reuters reporter covering the consumer goods sector, based in New York. Additional writing for Reuters by Ludwig Burger.

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