Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

RAGT Seeds UK, which took over the Plant Breeding International Corporation (PBIC) in 2004 is adding the finishing touches to a 5,000 sq m (54,000 sq ft) purpose-built facility, which will become its new UK HQ, sat between Saffron Walden and Sawston.

Staff have already begun what is a phased move into the new facility, which will house cereal quality analytics and genetic marker laboratories serving the its entire European operations.

The rest of the company and staff should be across from the Trumpington site by the end of September, the eviction deadline. What little remains of Monsanto’s Cambridge operations, the Elms BMW Cambridge prep centre and Anglia Ruskin University’s facilities will also need to meet the end of month deadline.

RAGT Seeds’ also has a production plant in Stretham, near Ely, where it handles over 1000 tonnes of early generation seed each year and also houses its seed quality lab and officially licensed DEFRA seed testing station.

The Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) was established in 1912 as a Cambridge University plant breeding institute by the Board of Agriculture. In 1952 it split from the University and relocated to Trumpington under UK Government funding.

Originally it was entirely devoted to the breeding of improved varieties of wheat, particularly with regard to better grain quality, with an insistence that breeding for improved crop quality must be based on research into crop genetics and physiology.

Since then, PBI has overseen major breakthroughs in research, such as Maris Piper potatoes, which were developed by PBI and are still significant in today’s market, while wheat breeders continue to acknowledge they are still reaping the benefits of the work done at PBI. Over its 75 year history the PBI produced over 130 new varieties of wheat, barley, oats, triticale, potatoes, field beans, maize, oilseed rape, clover, sugarbeet and grasses.

In 1990 the applied and basic scientists were split, with the fundamental “non-privatised’ part of the PBI moving to the John Innes site in Norwich to form the ‘Cambridge Laboratory’ whilst most of the applied scientists transferred to the new PBIC. In 1994 the Cambridge Laboratory was subsumed in the creation of the John Innes Centre. Monsanto retained only a small oilseed rape programme, based in Trumpington, while the cereals breeding continues on site with RAGT.

In 2004, RAGT purchased the PBIC cereals portfolio, recognised for its unique and improved varieties, from Monsanto, which had purchased it from Unilever who took it on in 1987 from the UK Government under its privatisation policy to move out of near market research.

This provided a compliment to the established maize, forage grass and oilseed businesses of the RAGT group and the RAGT portfolio of Robust wheats now offers UK farmers consistent and reliable variety performance.

RAGT Seeds Ltd is part of the RAGT Group, which has been supplying European farmers since 1919 and is one of Europe’s leading seeds businesses.
The RAGT Group employs over 1,100 staff worldwide, generating a turnover of over €270 million in the last year. The seed activity of the business accounts for almost 600 of the staff and €112.4m of turnover, 12 per cent of which is invested into R & D.

It produces wheat varieties for all sectors of the farming industry, from traditional family farms to major agribusinesses and varieties are developed to meet the needs of every market at home and abroad – from bread and biscuit making, through to whisky distilling and animal feed.