Semi-trailers have been queuing up, loading up and rolling out of the NSW Central Coast site of crop protection business FMC after an intense 12-month countdown to the global retail launch of new broad spectrum herbicide, Overwatch.
The cropping sector's new blockbuster mode of action chemistry, based on active ingredient Bixlozone, promises to significantly strengthen graingrowers' armoury against broadleaf weeds in canola, wheat and barley.
Importantly, the pre-emergent also kills key grass weeds such as annual ryegrass where existing chemical resistance issues are widespread and a major industry fear.
Overwatch represents the first in a pipeline of 35 new active ingredients which FMC plans to release around the world by 2030, including more than 20 new modes of action.
Its research and development strategy, combining synthetic chemistry and biological products, includes a large program of trials for cereals, fruit and vegetables in Australia.
The company won't say how much of its newest winter crop product has been formulated at its Wyong factory during the build up to this season's commercial debut, but the site has seen big changes of late, including now running 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet demand.
Exceeding expectations
"Based on what was anticipated for our first global launch, orders have already exceeded expectations and we've had to keep ramping up production accordingly," said FMC's Australia and New Zealand managing director, Kristina Hermanson.
"Responses from growers, agronomists and consultants after last season's large scale demonstration program - about 100 trials Australia-wide - have been really positive.
"Those results gave us a lot of confidence in how Overwatch would perform, and a data set like nothing we've had before at FMC."
Until relatively recently, US-based FMC was better known as a global marketer of off-patent chemistry previously developed and launched by other companies.
About 90 per cent of its products were sourced in China.
A drive to develop and release its own chemistry and spread its manufacturing base was, in part, made possible by the company's $US1.2 billion purchase of DuPont's insecticide and cereal and broadleaf herbicide businesses and brands in 2017.
That deal included a lot of Dupont's crop protection research and development capabilities.
Two years earlier FMC had also paid about $US1.8b for Danish company Cheminova, including Australian subsidiary Ospray and its NSW chemical formulation plant.
The relatively modest-sized Wyong operation, established in the 1970s, produced a lot of glyphosate and was heavily focused on toll manufacturing for several crop protection players.
It also made animal health insecticides such as livestock dips.
Under FMC, glyphosate and animal health lines are definitely out, with the focus on herbicide, fungicide, insecticide and oil emulsion brands from FMC's own portfolio, plus laboratory research into how those products and new chemicals respond in Australian cropping conditions.
Globally the company now has 22 manufacturing plants worldwide - half in the Asia-Pacific - and has cut reliance on Chinese production to 60pc.
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FMC's Australian portfolio includes the herbicide brands, Rustler, Hammer and Graslan, the insecticide Avatar, and Impact fungicide.
In its bid to get better bang for its buck locally, the company has spent about $5 million upgrading and repurposing facilities at Wyong to focus on smarter, safer manufacturing and accommodate the new Overwatch production line.
Shifting up a gear
Until about 12 months ago the plant operated just one shift, five days a week, but when last year's big seasonal break hit in eastern Australia, coinciding with farm chemical import shortages caused by coronavirus disruptions, FMC's Wyong operation was in the box seat to step up.
With global logistics stretched and farmers' orders surging in, it responded with extra shifts to run the plant around the clock, swiftly flexing to accommodate geographies where suppliers were struggling to meet multiple demands.
"We were running harder last year than in the previous three years combined," said Ms Hermanson.
She expected the site's permanent payroll of 24, plus casuals, to grow further in 2021.
The company may also need to enlarge the almost 7000 pallet-capacity warehouse area occupying about half FMC's five hectare site.
Valuable product
"We can't anticipate how seasonal conditions will be this year across all those cropping regions, but we feel very confident the ryegrass control advantages and chemical rotation options offered by Overwatch have certainly appealed to early adopters on farms," she said.
"This is a product which will really add value to farmers' businesses.
"A new mode of action is really required to help resistance management, and we need to help keep other good herbicide products alive and effective."
FMC's manufacturing general manager Steve Poole said plans were in train to open the Wyong plant to farmers and cropping sector supplier visits to give them better insight into what the company does in Australia, and seek their feedback.
"We already know there's lots of value in getting growers and distributors coming onto the site," he said.
"You can show them why and how things are done at this end, and hear their experiences in different environments, and what they're concerned about.
"We're also discussing getting staff from the plant out on farms to meet producers in the paddock and understand what happens when our products are used."
The formulation plant already required a lot of feedback from the bush and real time performance testing to gauge how products performed with different temperatures, water quality or other chemicals in the mixing tank.
Ambitious standards
At the chemistry development level FMC has adopted an award winning tool to test the sustainability of new products across six key parameters including food quality expectations, health and safety, environmental consciousness and climate change.
The company expects new active ingredients in the biological and synthetic chemistry pipeline will deliver up to $US2.1b in global revenue by 2030 and eventually almost $US3b.
Ms Hermanson noted one of those ingredients was the first new mode of action chemistry for the rice industry in decades, to be launched internationally over a two- to six-year timeframe.
"While rice is a relatively small crop segment for Australia and would not normally warrant such an investment for local production, Australia has already played an important part in the research trials and global registration for this new chemistry."
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
