Page 86 - Innovation Delaware 2021

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Belchim Crop Protection USA:
Targeting Herbicide-Resistant Weeds
Belchim Crop Protection is launching two innovative herbicides this year — one in its marquis agriculture sector, and another in the home and garden market, where the company is making inroads.
“We’re all about innovation,” says TOM WOOD, president and general manager of the company’s Wilmington-based U.S. office. “We want to bring new products, new innovations to the U.S. market.”
Beloukha Garden Herbicide, made from sunflower oil, kills whatever you spray it on. “It works like Roundup. It takes care of weeds,” Wood says. “You spray it on your sidewalks, your hard surfaces, your landscapes, it’s going to take care of your weeds for you — and it’s an environmentally friendly application.” Beloukha is based on pelargonic acid, which is not a new chemical; the process to create it is, though, as it has traditionally been made from tallow — animal fat. “We were looking for a cleaner, more regenerative base to make pelargonic acid,” says Wood. A Belchim partner came up with
a way to make it from sunflower oil. Beloukha degrades into the soil as carbon dioxide and water.
TOUGH 5EC, meanwhile, is a new agricultural herbicide for killing broadleaf weeds. “There’s one called Palmer amaranth that, if left unchecked, it grows like a tree,” Wood says. “It’s taking over corn fields in the Midwest.” Belchim heard from Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse and others that the nasty weed is moving east. A main selling point for the pyridate-based TOUGH 5EC is that it targets weeds that have grown resistant to existing herbicides. “If a grower sees things like these in their fields,” says Wood, “they know if they don’t do anything, it’s going to take over and they won’t have a crop.”
Founded in Belgium in 1987, Belchim went through a round of global expansion in 2016 and set up shop at Little Falls Centre in Wilmington in 2018. The company focuses
on late-stage development, taking proven chemical formulas and getting them to market. That means getting the formulas registered, a process that requires input and approval from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — which, it turns out, was a big reason the firm decided on Delaware.
“Wilmington worked because of its proximity to Washington, D.C.,” Wood says. “We’re a regulated product, we work a lot with the EPA, so the proximity to Washington was very instrumental.”
Before the firm had settled on Delaware, it had already incorporated in Wilmington, and the Eastern time zone made sense for coordination with Europe and the Canadian office outside Toronto. When the CEO homed in on Philadelphia, Wood — who grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania — told him, if you’re going to go to Philly, go to Wilmington.
“It suits our skin,” Wood says. “It’s not the big city; it’s a place where we can be in the suburbs, and if you want to be in that area, then Wilmington’s the place to be.” For Wood, it was a homecoming of sorts. His first job out of college was at the Hercules Research Center, which now sits across the old fairway from his office at Little Falls. Says Wood: “It’s like I’ve come
full circle.”
TOM WOOD
—Matt Ward
INNOVATION BY THE NUMBERS
42
Percent of land in Delaware used for agricultural production
350
Number of acres covered by the University of Delaware’s farm lab
11,892
Number of jobs in Delaware’s food and agriculture industry
90
Percentage of Delaware farms that
are either sole or family proprietorships or family-owned corporations
84 DelawareBusinessTimes.com
Source: Delaware Prosperity Partnership