Over the last 30 years, Belchim Crop Protection has evolved into one of Europe’s top agricultural companies. So, naturally, they wanted to keep growing.

“We’re expanding beyond the confines of Europe into the bigger ag markets in North America, Asia and Latin America,” said Tom Wood, Belchim’s GM. “The United States is one of the largest ag economies in the world, so this is where we expanded to first, Canada and the United States.”

“We looked at a variety of locations.”

Belchim’s  global expansion strategy was to bring its proprietary products and build on an already existing platform. In May 2017, the company bought out Engage Agro, based in Arizona. Belchim considered keeping its headquarters there — the company has a strong West Coast client base — but, ultimately, it wasn’t the right fit.

“We were impressed with Arizona,” said Wood. “It’s a nice place, but it’s not so convenient to do business in the ag space, so we looked at North Carolina — a lot of innovative folks there — Kansas City in the middle of the country, Dallas and Philadelphia, which brought us down to Wilmington.”

So why Delaware?

“At the end of the day, we saw Wilmington as convenient for coordination with our corporate headquarters [in Belgium], only six hours away, it’s convenient to our headquarters in Canada, which is right outside of Toronto,” explained Wood. “It’s located near a known agricultural base, with FMC and Dupont — it’s a known agricultural area. And it was an attractive area for us to be in. Out of all the places we could go, Delaware was chosen by the CEO. We didn’t spent much time doing it. We liked Delaware, we liked Wilmington, and we moved in quickly.”

Belchim joins TrafficCast as a company that’s made a recent move to set up its headquarters in Delaware.

Do you use drones to monitor your fields? Drone industry launches into specialty agriculture market https://t.co/hErYotwPEP

— BelchimUSA (@BelchimUSA) July 5, 2018

Belchim’s bread and butter

“We provide a broad range of conventional and biological chemistries,” said Wood. “Our innovation is in the formulation technology area. We combine existing products to make better solutions for growers.”

As Belchim settles in to its new Wilmington location in Little Falls Centre II on Centerville Road, there are jobs to fill. For the most part, the company plans to hire through recruiters; you can learn more about Belchim USA on its website.