Plant protection business
Bayer gives up location Frankfurt – 500 jobs affected
In 2018 Bayer took over his US competitor Monsanto, but the hoped-for liberation in the agricultural business became nothing. The global price pressure is high, now Bayer wants to dismantle positions.
The pharmaceutical and agrarchemy group Bayer represents its crop protection business and closes its location in Frankfurt. Due to cost prints from Asia, the DAX group wants to focus its agricultural division more on strategic, innovative technologies and products in order to stand out in the hard price war with manufacturers of imitators.
In the course of this, Bayer plans to give up its location in Frankfurt with 500 employees until the end of 2028, said the group. Research and development will be bundled in Monheim am Rhein in the future. In addition, production at the Dormagen location near Leverkusen should be set up, around 200 positions are to be dropped there. Almost 1,200 people are currently employed there.
In the Frankfurt Industrial Park Höchst, Bayer maintains both production capacities for herbicide active substances and formulations as well as research and development for pesticides. However, not all jobs should be omitted, as Bayer emphasizes. A buyer is to be found for parts of production, others are to pass to the locations in Dormagen and Knapsack in Hürth near Cologne.
Ruinous cost pressure from Asia
Bayer gave cost pressure and increasing regulatory hurdles as the reason for the cuts. “In particular, Asian manufacturers of pesticide generics have built up major overcapacities in recent years and are pushing into the market with lasting low prices, some of which are below the manufacturing costs of pesticides in Europe,” said the group.
The chemical union IG BCE and the Bayer works council reacted with sharp criticism. “These closure plans are a turning point in the 162-year history of the group and contradict the declared Bayer Creed on Germany,” said Francesco Grioli, member of the executive main board of IG BCE.
The works council: “For the first time, the German location would be abandoned”
The closure of the Frankfurt location would be a novelty in the company’s history, criticized the union and the general works council. “For the first time, a German location would be abandoned.” They demanded to check alternatives to closure.
Bayer has already tightened the administration under CEO Bill Anderson in recent years and dismantled many management points. At the end of 2024, Bayer employed almost 93,000 people – after almost 100,000 a year earlier. Bayer has long been struggling with a partly weakening agricultural business, especially because of a decline in prices for the weed killer glyphosate.
dpa
Source: Stern
