CITIC Targeting One-Third of Brazil’s Corn Seed Market
China’s Longping High-Tech Agriculture Co, an agriculture subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate CITIC Group, is targeting Brazil’s corn seed market for expansion.
Last year, Longping acquired DowDuPont’s Brazilian corn seed business for $1.1 billion, and recently announced it will be building new seed plants across the country to increase production capacity. The company has not stated the forecasted cost of such projects, but has said that a lack of necessary capital will not be an issue.
Noting that the country is expected to see its corn production increase by 5 percent per year in the near future, Longping is aiming to increase its share of Brazil’s corn seed market (worth $4.02 billion) from its current 15 percent to 30 percent.
Once this is achieved, the company has its longer-term sights set on entering Brazil’s soy seed business, which is currently dominated by Monsanto.
Saying that they plan to be in Brazil’s seed industry for 100 years, Longping is also planning to build research centers dedicated to improving its corn seed varieties and to begin developing new soy and sorghum seed varieties.
.png)