VIEWPOINT

Lonza: Formulations for a Changing Market

By Richard Youngman, Global Marketing Director for Lonza

As the choice and variety of active substances dwindles, formulation chemists are
finding themselves cast into the front line-plant protection product manufacturers,
from the biggest to the smallest, are increasingly focusing on formulation as a point of
differentiation.
Richard Youngman, head of Global Marketing for Lonza Agro Ingredients,
examines recent trends in agrochemical formulation strategies and offers an insight
into why formulation has become such a hot topic.

Agrochemical formulation is at last getting the attention

it deserves, but it’s been a long time coming.
While acknowledging that formulation plays an
essential role in achieving the successful delivery and
biological activity of any plant protection product, and
ensuring its safety and convenience in use, only within
the last decade or so have the simple formulations of
the past, the abbreviations we’re all so familiar with—
simple water solutions (SL), emulsifiable concentrates
(EC) and wettable powders (WP)—given way to
the more exacting, high-tech developments of oil-
dispersion (OD), oil-in-water emulsions (EW) and
suspension emulsions (SE).
These developments are due in part to
progress in novel chemistry which require more
advanced formulation technology and also to
increased regulations concerning operator
and environmental safety. The volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) so prevalent in
EC formulations of 30 years ago were not
only unpopular with users, but increasingly
difficult to justify on environmental grounds.
The quest for newer, better, formulations is to
be welcomed.

6 2017 Formulation & Adjuvant Technology www.agropages.com