InterGrain price remains a secret

The State Government has refused to disclose how much it paid to soak up Monsanto’s share in seed-breeding company InterGrain.

Monsanto has opted out of the Bibra Lake-based company six years after grabbing a 19.9 per cent stake in a deal worth more than $10 million.

It paid $4.5 million to up that stake to 26 per cent in 2013 despite opposition from green groups and some farmers as controversy raged about the use of genetically modified crops.

The Government said it had purchased half of the Monsanto stake with the Grains Research and Development Corporation taking the remainder.

The Government now owns 61.7 per cent of InterGrain, the company it created by privatising the Department of Agriculture and Food WA’s wheat- breeding program in 2007.

InterGrain chief executive Tress Walmsley said Monsanto had decided to exit wheat breeding in Australia and had sold out to the other shareholders on “beneficial terms”.

Mrs Walmsley said the move created opportunities to partner with other big players in the wheat industry and did not affect InterGrain’s ties with Syngenta in barley breeding.

Agriculture Minister Dean Nalder said details were commercial in-confidence but the opportunity to purchase Monsanto’s stake represented “good value to the State”.

“Monsanto's exit from the business had been a well-planned and amicable process, allowing InterGrain to continue to use Monsanto’s technology to complete its 2016 breeding program,” he said.

InterGrain will eventually lose access to Monsanto’s molecular marker platform.