Blome, president and CEO of Bayer CropScience LP and head of Crop Protection North America, does admit that his company has a master development plan that includes “several more facilities” for RTP. He’s just not ready to say what all of them are, or when they’ll materialize.
Blome was joined by a bevy of shovel-wielding celebrants who dug into rain-soaked mud Monday to officially begin construction on Bayer’s $29.6 million “Greenhouse 1” (GH1) research facility.
'A showcase for the new agricultural technology'
Gwyn Riddick, MBA, executive advisor, strategic development, agricultural biotechnology consultant with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, was among those who spoke to the groundbreaking audience. A native of rural Randolph County, Riddick noted the contrast between Bayer's new greenhouses and his family's installation -- the first greenhouse in Randolph County.
"This is a showcase for the new agricultural technology," said Riddick of the GH1 plan.
The 29,500-square-foot building is slated to open around the end of 2015, the latest in a string of multi-million-dollar investments on the Alexander Drive campus, which serves as Bayer’s North American and global seeds headquarters.
“We have four sites in the Raleigh area,” Blome said in an interview after the groundbreaking. “We’re going to bring them all onto this site in the next few years. We want to create a lot of interaction among our scientists and other personnel, have them running into each other in our open-office environment and exposing themselves to other ideas.”
The company has about 700 employees in the Triangle so far.
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