Production and breeding location Buzet-sur-Baïse

One site,
many crops

We have produced seed at Buzet-sur-Baïse in France since the 1990s. That started with sugarbeet, but now the station handles multiple crops.

Buzet-sur-Baïse lies by the River Garonne.

The site, which organizationally is part of the company KWS France, could hardly be situated in a more idyllic place. Buzet-sur-Baïse is located between Bordeaux and Toulouse in the wine-growing region of the same name in the lordship of Albret between the River Garonne and the forests and heaths of the Gascogne. Wines with the label AOC (controlled designation of origin) come from the around 2,000 hectare region.

And that is not all: KWS has run a production and breeding station there for the crops sugarbeet, rapeseed, corn, sunflower, sorghum and cereals (hybrid rye) since the beginning of the 1990s.

The history of KWS Buzet began with a collaboration with French cooperatives and multiplication of sugarbeet. Yet KWS was soon planning its own structures in France – among other things, to establish a second large location alongside the sugarbeet multiplication region in Italy.

KWS built the present-day production site from 1994 to 1996. It reaped its first harvest in 1996.

KWS erected the current production site in Buzet from 1994 to 1996.

The Buzet station now produces and breeds many crops and trial hybrids. Important milestones on that path were construction of a sugarbeet plant in 1996, the launch of rapeseed activities ten years later, the start of corn production in 2009 in multiple expansion stages, and installation of a sugarbeet seed treatment and packaging plant (FRANCA) in 2019.

Around 76 people of different nationalities are currently employed in Buzet, plus temporary and seasonal workers. They coordinate all the work on the multiplication areas, advise multipliers so as to achieve the best-possible quality, and perform all work steps up to shipment of the seed to other production sites, where it is processed, packaged and sent to customers. The breeders, for their part, make an important contribution to developing new varieties for KWS in their work, whether in the field or at the computer.

“We’re well-positioned and we hope that production will remain stable and we will be able to breed and produce new crops and drive innovative projects moving ahead,” says Olivier de Croisœüil, Head of Production at Buzet. |