PelGar International is marking its 30th anniversary this year. Dr Gareth Capel-Williams, the company’s managing director, tells Simon King about PelGar’s early days and how the business is looking to grow even further around the world
PelGar was incorporated in 1995 with the objective of developing technically excellent rodenticides and insecticides for the global public health market.
Managing director Dr Gareth Capel-Williams has a PhD in entomology from Imperial College London. He went straight into ICI Agrochemicals and joined its Public Health Group, developing and researching new active ingredients.
“I stayed there for a year, and I was told I was too commercial,” Gareth says.
“I went to Fernhurst, the commercial HQ of ICI Agrochemicals, and joined as part of the technical team of ICI Public Health. As an entomologist, my main focus at that time was insect vector control.”
That work meant that Gareth spent a lot of time doing epidemiological trials with the World Health Organisation in Tanzania and Nepal for malaria control; in Brazil, with the Pan American Health Organisation for Chagas disease control; and he also did a lot of work in the Caribbean and Latin America on Dengue control.
The business Gareth worked for became Zeneca when ICI spun off the life sciences part to form Zeneca Agrochemicals and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals.
“Zeneca had discovered lambda cyhalothrin, so a lot of my work at that time was developing lambda cyhalothrin for vector control,” Gareth says. “I also worked with that active in urban situations, including cockroach control in Washington D.C. and around the Caribbean and various other places.”
Gareth worked at ICI/Zeneca for 19 years and in the early to mid-1990s, he was number two in the Zeneca Public Health business.
“Around 1994/95 things happened internally within Zeneca Agrochemicals,” Gareth says, “and I certainly got the impression that Zeneca losing interest in the public health business. It did end up with them rolling what was Zeneca Public Health into the mainstream Agrochemical business, with sales run through the local Zeneca selling companies, which was very disappointing.
“It was very common at the time for people to leave multinationals and become consultants, but
very few people left to set-up in competition.”
That is what happened with the development of PelGar.
“Technical innovation has always been at the heart of PelGar, and that is the ingrained culture. There’s a great passion in understanding the pests, the problems they cause, the health risks, and finding solutions for that,” he adds.
The early days at PelGar
PelGar had a very clear vision from the early days and always played for the long game.
“From my point of view, public health covers two sectors – insecticides and rodenticides; for PelGar to have a sustainable future, it had to be vertically integrated,” Gareth says.
“PelGar had to have control of the active substances as well as control of the formulation it sold. It was clear from day one that the focus of PelGar’s early development would be with rodenticides. Insecticides actives are all controlled by the major agrichemical companies and to manufacture active ingredients, you need large sites – a small company would never be able to compete.”
Rodenticides represent a very different opportunity.
“With the second-generation anticoagulants 1kg of active makes 20te of a 50ppm bait, so you don’t need a massive facility to produce an interesting quantity of active,” Gareth says.
“PelGar, working with a very clever chemist developed methods to synthesise difenacoum, bromadiolone and brodifacoum – three AVK active substances – and a wide range of formulations based on those actives.”
“The Biocidal Regulation was very much on the horizon in those days, and so it was clear that PelGar had to develop robust regulatory dossiers to support both the actives and the formulations which was very expensive for a small business,” Gareth says.
As the Biocidal Products Directive was implemented in Europe and the UK, PelGar invested heavily to generate full regulatory dossiers for difenacoum, bromadiolone and brodifacoum and more than 20 formulations containing these actives.
Sustainable options
Gareth concedes that he is of an age where hard chemicals are what he knows and that’s something that PelGar has always focused on.
“It’s been quite difficult for me over the last 10 years, to realise hard chemicals are not the panacea, although I still maintain they’ve got an absolutely essential role to play in pest control, but industry has to have look at the environment, sustainability and the human/environmental risk assessments,” Gareth says.
“The use of hard chemicals is frowned upon in some situations and alternatives need to be found. That pressure for innovation is good, but it does take time and a lot of investment.”
Developing the business
Very soon after its creation, PelGar started developing rodenticide formulations, all of which were toll manufactured.
“The business initially was based in office accommodation with nowhere to make things, so the company was reliant on tollers. PelGar very quickly learned that, if you want quality and you want stuff delivered on time, you’ve got to do it yourself,” Gareth says.
In 2000, the business took one unit in Alton and had around 15 staff; today the business has six units – with a seventh due to be taken this year – plus a site at Telford, and employs 130 people.
The business is now at another point of change.
“We’re used to being informal, taking quick decisions, and definitely not being run by committee,” Gareth says.
“Significant changes are being made to support and strengthen the growing business.
“PelGar is investing heavily in staff training and bringing new people in that will support the culture change required to maintain growth and expansion; investment is being made within manufacturing to improve efficiency and productivity.”
Gareth remains absolutely clear that PelGar will not lose the ability to take quick informed decisions to drive the business forward.
PelGar currently sells into 70 markets globally.
“Not that long ago, if we shipped a pallet of goods a week, that was fantastic; now we’re shipping multiple 40-foot containers a week,” Gareth says.
PelGar spends a higher than average 7-8% of its revenue on regulatory support and R&D, with a strong commitment to the next generation of pest control products.
White label
PelGar has always had a significant white label business in the UK, and it also has its own well established brands – Roban, Rodex and Vertox on the rodenticide side, and Cytrol, Cimetrol and Alphaban in insecticides.
“We do have other brands in some parts of the world – including Brigand and Monarch in the USA,” Gareth says.
PelGar’s white label business is based on the company’s regulatory strength with the customers developing or supporting their own brands.
Looking ahead
PelGar is the largest seller of rat and mouse bait boxes in Australia and New Zealand and every McDonald’s store in Australia – that’s 1,053 sites – has a fly unit supplied by PelGar.
Looking overseas, Gareth says PelGar is incorporating a company in India, which will hold registrations and PelGar will then follow its usual model of selling through distributors.
“India has always been a target for me for a long time,” Gareth says. “PelGar is planning for growth in Southeast Asia, over the next two or three years.
Suprit Thakre has been appointed as country manager for Southeast Asia, reporting to Gerwyn Jones, PelGar’s Asia Pacific business manager.
Gareth says: “Suprit has got 18 countries to focus on, and we’ve got registrations at the moment in only three of those.
“There is a lot of work still to do.”