Syngenta is to build a new £100m research centre for agricultural bioscience, a move hailed by the government as a vote of confidence in the UK’s science base.
The Chinese-owned company, one of the biggest agrichemical groups in the world, will open the centre at its Jealott’s Hill site in Berkshire to host hundreds of scientists.
The decision will provide a boost to relations between the research industry and government after a public row with the pharmaceutical sector over drug pricing and other issues, which led to big drugmakers cancelling or pausing nearly £2bn in UK investments last year.
AstraZeneca’s planned £200m expansion of its research operations in Cambridge is still on hold.
Switzerland-based Syngenta said the new bioscience hub would focus on a range of technologies such as biological pesticides – the next generation of crop protection. There will be significant investment in AI tools to underpin the research.
Called BioSTaR (Biological Sciences Technology and Research), it will bring together its bioscience operations under one roof, including 300 scientists. No new jobs are planned in the initial phase.
Overall, 800 people are working at Jealott’s Hill, Syngenta’s biggest research and development (R&D) site worldwide, in areas including global product safety, digital imaging and discovery chemistry. The company employs more than 2,000 people in the UK across six sites. Aside from products to aid crop production such as fungicides and insecticides, it develops field crops, vegetable seeds and flowers.
Angela Eagle, the farming minister, described the investment, which does not involve any state subsidies, as “a clear vote of confidence in the UK and our world-leading agricultural science”. She said the government was investing £345m in grants for equipment and innovation to help farmers grow food more sustainably.
Syngenta was founded in 2000 by the merger of the agrichemical businesses of Novartis and AstraZeneca, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It was acquired by China National Chemical Corporation in 2017, and reported about $30bn (£23bn) in sales for 2024.
Syngenta is reportedly seeking a return to the stock market via a blockbuster listing in Hong Kong, two years after pulling a planned $9bn flotation in Shanghai. Its owners want to raise as much as $10bn by floating 20% of the company. Syngenta declined to comment on the IPO plans.
The new centre is expected to be completed in 2028. Work ranges from designing sustainable crop protection for farmers with novel chemical and biological modes of action, and anticipating resistance before it develops, to creating products that respond to environmental signals such as temperature and soil quality.
Camilla Corsi, global head of crop protection R&D at Syngenta, said: “We are focused on creating a more productive and sustainable future for agriculture. With this investment, we are pushing the boundaries of science.”
The company announced earlier this month it would cease global production of its controversial weed killer paraquat, made solely at its Huddersfield factory in northern England, by the end of June, citing competition from generic producers. Syngenta faces several thousand lawsuits brought by people in the US who allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to their exposure to paraquat.
