BASF closes acquisition of Bayer businesses and assets

The acquisition of Bayer's assets presents new opportunities for innovation and growth for BASF

“This strategic move adds excellent assets to our strong agricultural solutions portfolio and enhances our innovation potential. Overall, it ensures an even more comprehensive and attractive offering to our customers,” said Dr Martin Brudermüller, chairman of the Board of Executive Directors and Chief Technology Officer of BASF SE.

“This acquisition transforms BASF’s agricultural activities. It strengthens our market position in agricultural solutions and creates new opportunities for growth,” added Saori Dubourg, member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE who is responsible for the Agricultural Solutions segment. “We are looking forward to our joint journey and warmly welcome the new colleagues to BASF.”

BASF signed agreements in October 2017 and April 2018 to acquire the businesses and assets Bayer offered to divest in the context of its acquisition of Monsanto, for an all-cash purchase of €7.6 billion ($8.8 billion), subject to certain adjustments at closing. About 4,500 employees join BASF through the acquisition.

The agreements include Bayer’s global glufosinate-ammonium business; seeds businesses including traits, research, and breeding capabilities; and trademarks for key row crops in select markets; the vegetable seeds business; the R&D platform for hybrid wheat; a range of seed treatment products; certain glyphosate-based herbicides in Europe, used predominantly for industrial applications; the complete digital farming platform xarvioTM; as well as certain non-selective herbicide and nematicide research projects. These transactions are now completed, except for the vegetable seeds business the closing of which is expected in mid-August 2018.

Customers benefit from the acquisition as they will have access to even more tools to increase their yields, crop quality, and profitability. “With strong solutions from seeds to harvest, enabled by even better R&D capabilities and scale, we will increase the competition in the market. This means customers have a real choice, today and in the future,” explained Markus Heldt, president of BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division. “After months of preparing the seamless transfer of businesses and smooth onboarding of employees, everybody is keen to finally get started—as a new team and with our expanded business and capabilities.”

To reflect the expanded scope of its agriculture business, BASF has renamed the division from Crop Protection to Agricultural Solutions. In addition, the division has established a new global business unit for seeds and traits.