Starting from scratch, the company has become one of the world s five largest seed companies, and the world s leading vegetable seed company in just 3 years. Through a series of well coordinated acquisitions and strategic alliances, ELM became an integrated fresh produce and seed company with access to major markets, genetic materials, breeding programmes and advanced biotechnology. ELM s strategy for becoming a global vegetable seed producer has to be seen against the background of trends in the world seed market. To maintain or even increase profits seed companies had to shift away from a traditional product and technical orientation towards a market oriented strategy. The market-segment scope .
Seed companies have to decide for the crops, the market needs and seed qualities they are aiming at.
Each market has its specific quality segments and seed companies have to make sure their products meet the respective demands. For instance, tomato varieties have to be chosen according to the specific market segments a company is aiming at, such as fresh produce, tomato soup or paste. For these specific segments, a company has to get hold of the required crop varieties and germplasm. To provide these varieties, traditional plant breeding is applied, but increasingly, modern biotechnology is becoming an additional tool used for the improvement of seeds. A seed company that is engaged in the production of different seeds therefore needs to have access at the same time to traditional breeding, a broad germplasm base and modern biotechnologies.