Belchim Crop Protection

Mitsui AgriSciences International (MASI) agreed to acquire the 62% of

Belchim Crop Protection owned by Belchim Management by jointly signing

an agreement on December 6

2019. This triggered an approval process with

the European Commission Competition Authorities which finally concluded

with a positive conclusion in February 2021. Covid-19 certainly played its

part in the time taken to complete this process and in addition the detailed

information requested in some very niche markets where application

and use data is simply not available from the usual 3

party sources also

required more time than anticipated. MASI became shareholder in Belchim

Crop Protection on 30

April 2021 and from that day onwards we finally

became part of Mitsui & Co and in particular the newest member of the

MASI global family of Crop Protection companies including Certis Europe,

Certis Biologicals and the recently launched Cosaco (formerly Kocide LLC

and Spiess-Urania GmbH).

When looking back on the company performance in 2021, we can conclude

that after four years of predominantly dry weather in the potato growing

areas of Western Europe, this year was really wet and consequently a high

late blight pressure developed in potato crops. Unlike other wet years such

as 2014 and 2016, this time the wet period started rather late, from the

last week of June onwards, but lasted till the end of August. As potatoes

are still Belchim's most important crop, this created a huge supply chain

challenge. We showcased our company value of flexibility in our response to

this changing demand, ensuring product availability throughout the whole

season. A special thank you to all our colleagues for this great performance.

This year Belchim continued to bring innovative solutions to the markets,

with a highlight being the successful market introduction of the Tough

corn

herbicide in the US, a landmark event for the company. Adding a new mode

of action that can help to combat the multiple resistant weeds resulting

from the use of glyphosate tolerant varieties, has been welcomed by the US

farmers and advisors as a major asset in their herbicide toolbox.

Being part of the Mitsui family

2021 was a potato Late Blight year