CHAIRMAN’S REVIEW
2006 saw the Company make significant progress and
this has continued post period end in 2007. There have
been particular developments in the following areas:
• Identifying and concluding appropriate further
commercial deals to maximise the opportunities for
our products in the major agricultural chemical
markets of Europe, North America and East Asia;
• Clearing the remaining (regulatory) hurdles required
to start worldwide sale of our lead fungicide (3AEY),
for control of botrytis;
• Further enhancing the efficacy of our existing
encapsulated terpene combinations;
• Confirming the lead products for control of
nematodes;
• Identifying further plant fungal disease control
products;
• Confirming the potential use of our products for
mite control; and
• Making progress in exploiting the potential of our
products for control of plant bacterial diseases.
As we get closer to achieving significant volume
commercial sales, we see further ways to exploit the
achievements of recent years in developing our existing
encapsulated terpene technology for use in agriculture.
Our marketing and projects staff have recently reviewed
the markets for our products, identifying new
opportunities in the volume cereal, oilseed and amenity
markets due to the increasing biological resistance being
shown by pests and diseases to conventional crop
protection products. This, combined with the growth in
demand for organic products and rising global awareness
on chemical pollution, is driving the demand for our
intellectual property and products.
We have also identified new ways of adapting our
basic encapsulation technology, and further formulation
development work will go ahead during the summer of
2007 with respect to these new target areas.
We were pleased to announce our Joint Development
Agreement with Zagro Singapore PTE Ltd, a Singaporean
based public company, in December. Under the
agreement Eden has granted Zagro an exclusive licence
for products that they trial and take to market in a
number of selected territories, at the expense of Zagro.
Zagro are currently undertaking this work to develop
further and adapt our products for specific uses relevant
to tropical crops in their markets.
Development of products for the temperate European,
North American and East Asian markets remains a key
priority, and this will now be complimented by the recent
conclusion of the license agreement (post period end in
May 2007) with Cheminova A/S, who have particular
strengths in these three regions. Suitable partners have
still to be confirmed for East Asia, Australasia, Africa and
the Middle East, with discussions and testing exercises in
all these regions at a variety of stages.
Regulatory Activities
Agrisearch International, our main regulatory contract
research organisation (CRO), conducted 18 grape botrytis
and 10 cucumber powdery mildew efficacy trials, as well
as a variety of residue, taint and crop safety trials in
Spain, Portugal and Greece during 2007. The Greek
authorities were consulted about the draft results from
this work, and expressed themselves satisfied with the
competitiveness of our products in providing effective
control of both botrytis and powdery mildew. The
authorities indicated that little further work will be
required for them to process our efficacy submission for
registration of 3AEY, once EU-wide approval of the active
substances in this formulation is given by the UK’s
Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD). PSD have agreed to
classify our ingredients under their Bio-pesticide Scheme,
which will streamline the regulatory process.
With Europe identified as a major regional market for
3AEY, JSC International, our regulatory consultants, are
presently overseeing statutory testing and preparing the
crucial pan-European regulatory dossier for 3AEY and its
ingredients. The dossiers will be submitted during the
third quarter of this financial year. Much of the data will
then be used by our commercial partners to obtain
national regulatory approval in the United States and
elsewhere.
New Innovation
New avenues of investigation by consultants in a
formulation lab at Worcester, Mass, USA identified
improvements that will enable us to:
• exploit lower cost markets by increasing active
ingredient concentrations in our formulations from
16% to 29%;
• enhance efficacy, and potentially reduce the unit
cost of our products by optimising the proportions
of active ingredients in specific formulations; and
• identify new formulation methods, including low
cost high concentration powders, containing our
encapsulated terpenes.
Development Activities and Field Work
A number of grape Botrytis control efficacy trials were
conducted in all the main production areas of the USA.
This will heighten the status of our products by
reconfirming the excellent performance of 3AEY as seen
in several countries in Europe.
CHAIRMAN’S REVIEW
