Svalöf Weibull AB, internationally known as SW Seeds has formed a jointly-owned company together with SAS Maison Florimond Desprez in France and Elsoms Seed Ltd in the UK for plant breeding, production and marketing of winter oilseed rape to the European market. SW Seed is the majority shareholder of the new company which will be called SW Winter Oilseed AB.

SW Seed has a successful winter oilseed rape breeding programme and is well established on the European market. More recently the varieties Vision, Goya and Galileo have been introduced in many countries.

Since 1997 Florimond Desprez and Elsoms Seeds have had a breeding joint venture in  winter oilseed rape and now have significant numbers of varieties in national trials. SW Seed, Florimond Desprez and Elsoms Seeds are now bringing their programmes together to develop a stronger winter oilseed rape programme and portfolio for the whole European market. The new company will have both hybrid and open-pollinated breeding programmes and the joint resources will enable even greater selection and trialling to find the best material for each country’s environment and market. Any varieties of the parties currently on the market or in official trials will not be included in the cooperation.

“Winter oilseed rape is most important for SW Seed. We are very happy that Florimond Desprez and Elsoms Seeds are joining us to develop this business further” said Monika Lekander, Managing Director of Svalöf Weibull and of the new company.

“The total winter oilseed rape breeding investments concerned will deliver very competitive winter oilseed rape varieties which will be launched through the sales teams of the parties in the main European markets”, Monika Lekander continued.

François Desprez, President of SAS Maison Florimond Desprez said that "the obvious complementarities between the breeding programmes initiated by the three partners give SW Winter Oilseed AB the greatest chances to be entirely successful on the very competitive winter oilseed rape markets".

“We at Elsoms are really looking forward to this cooperation. It will give us a greatly increased range of material to select for the UK market - giving our customers even better new varieties and more of them”, said Anthony Keeling, Managing Director of Elsoms Seeds Ltd.

SW Seed is an international plant breeding and seed company. The core business is the development and marketing of new plant varieties and the production of seed. Cereals, oil seeds and forage grasses & legumes are the main crops. The most important markets are located within Central and Northern Europe.
 
SAS Maison Florimond Desprez is part of Florimond Desprez, a family owned group that is one of France’s largest seed companies and has operations in the breeding, production and sales of sugarbeets, cereals, forages and oilseeds.
 
Elsoms Seeds Ltd is an important English seed company specialising in the plant breeding, trialling and distribution of agricultural and vegetable seeds for the UK market.

Website: http://www.swseed.se

Published: July 6, 2009