St. Louis, Missouri
September 7, 2005
Monsanto Company
(NYSE:MON) said today that the company's Luling, Louisiana,
glyphosate manufacturing plant is nearly at full production
capacity following a shutdown that began August 27 as Hurricane
Katrina approached the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Glyphosate is the
active ingredient in the Roundup family of herbicides.
"The Luling plant is back up
and running just nine days after Katrina arrived," said Mark
Leidy, Monsanto's executive vice president of manufacturing. "We
owe this rapid restart to our suppliers and community leaders,
and especially to the resiliency of the people at our Luling
facility who worked tirelessly before and after Katrina hit.
Such incredible teamwork and cooperation during an emotional
time is crucial to our ability to continue supplying product to
our customers, as well as beginning to restore the economic
viability to the area."
The Luling plant is expected to
be at full operational capacity by Thursday morning. Leidy said
that Monsanto currently has sufficient finished goods inventory
to stem the gap in production resulting from Hurricane Katrina,
as inventory is maintained for unplanned outages to temporarily
bridge such production gaps.
In addition, Monsanto expects
that its ability to provide high-quality cotton seed to
customers for the coming season will not be significantly
affected by the aftermath of Katrina. "Our breeding and
production locations experienced minimal damage from the storm,
and this is not expected to significantly affect our overall
cotton seed availability for the 2006 season," Leidy said.
Monsanto Company is a
leading global provider of technology-based solutions and
agricultural products that improve farm productivity and food
quality.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Roundup is
a registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC. |