Euro business cops push DuPont Co.to sell Del. R&D site

In an unusual twist to an American mega-merger, research scientists are crediting a European regulator with helping to save hundreds of skilled U.S. jobs.

Early Monday, senior bosses at DuPont Co. told staff at DuPont Stine-Haskell Research Center, which covers 515 acres near the Pennsyvlania-Delaware-Maryland border, that most of the 600-worker center will be included in the sale of a list of bug- and weed-killing pesticides, research and development centers, and marketing staff to a competing company to help win European Commission approval for DuPont's planned merger with Dow Chemical Co.

The Europeans had worried that the consolidation of the farm-chemicals industry into a few global players would threaten to slow work on innovative new pesticides, drive up costs for farmers, and push consumer food prices higher. So they obliged DuPont to sell part of its pesticide business to a competitor.

The scientists and technicians had feared they faced layoffs, as DuPont CEO Edward Breen and Dow chief Andrew Liveris hunt for $3 billion in additional cost cuts they have promised hedge-fund managers and other shareholders. The ag scientists worried they could end up like the nearby DuPont Experimental Station's former central R&D staff, where Ph.D's and technicians were let go, retired early, or were transferred to business groups as the company cut 1,700 headquarters-area jobs last winter.

Shares in DuPont jumped more than 1 percent, to $80.58, on word of European approval, leading the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average, which mostly dropped Monday.

The DuPonters in Newark, Del., hope the Stine research, development and field-testing complex and their projects are sold to an energetic rival, such as Philadelphia-based FMC Corp., North Carolina-based Arysta Life Sciences, or any well-funded outfit looking to grow.

At least for now, DuPont plans to hold onto the smaller Haskell toxicology testing center at the site, which opened in 1935.  Not everyone yet knows which company they will stay with.

The buyer should be announced by late April. DuPont is divesting insecticides Rynaxypyr (which is used on fruits and vegetables, and licensed to Arysta), Cyazypyr (which kills citrus flies), and Indoxacarb (which EPA calls a reduced-risk substitute for popular but highly toxic organophosphates); a list of sulfuron herbicides, some of which are used to kill weeds in grainfields; and lenacil (Veznar), used on beets.

In a "DuPont Colleagues" note to staff, Breen said DuPont will hold onto its "seed treatment, nematicides, and late-stage R&D programs." In a separate note, DuPont ag chief Jim Collins and DuPont Crop Protection head Tim Glenn said they would keep "an excellent portfolio in corn and soy [weed and grass] control, a robust cereal weed control portfolio, [and] DuPont's strong position in disease control," to combine with Dow AgroSciences. They named Jean Pougnier, DuPont's Crop Protection business development director, as head of the businesses to be sold.

Reporting to Pougnier, senior officers in the DuPont spin-off company include, among others: Ravinder Balain, Asia Pacific business leader; Sebastian Pons, Europe-Middle East-Africa; Marcelo Okamura, Latin America; Phillip Hathcock, North America; and Brad Gollhardt, Global Operations. Also: Kathleen Shelton, Global R&D; Rolfe Ambach, Herbicides Global Marketing; Robert Alber, Insecticides Global Marketing; Cori Anne Natoli, Communications; Peter Thomas, demand leader and hold-separate project leader; Mark Blythe, finance; Mark Kuller, legal; Terry Shaw, HR.

Mazars Group has been appointed European Union monitoring trustee to protect the ex-DuPont business group's secrets.

In their note to staff, Collins and Glenn concluded that they hope for a "seamless transition" for customers.