Oilseed rape and sugar beet lack insecticidal protection under current EU regulation concentrated on offering strong customer services to gain the benefits of their sales and marketing .
Fine chemical supply chains since 1980
As the industrial background of companies inventing novel agrochemicals changed from strongly chemical-based to more researchbased , independent specialists in what became the fine chemical industry developed processes under contract to make the increasingly complex molecular targets being discovered . Similar symbiotic relationships with pharmaceutical companies allowed specialists to develop technologies with applications in both sectors . This beneficial situation continued but is rapidly changing its character and geography , as a result of the emergence of the two giant Asian economies , India and China . Both offered huge , relatively undeveloped markets for agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals , so it clearly made sense for the Western agrochemical industry to engage with the governments of these countries to secure new and profitable business .
The trade-off often involved the contracting companies in India and China requiring reciprocal manufacturing opportunities in exchange for market access . China ’ s insistence on joint ventures , in which Western technology was transferred to the Chinese partner , became an additional source of business loss for the US and European subcontracting specialists , as process know-how left the control of the inventing companies . India emerged about ten years ahead of China and focused on developing its own fine chemicals industry to supply the local market with the newer drugs , which had previously been too expensive for most of the population . In the process , India became reliant on China for the basic starting materials used to produce the AIs its industry needed . This suited China , where the skills base leaned more towards engineering and chemical technology than industrial process chemistry . As the Chinese chemical industry acquired processes for ‣
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