Bayer: Weedkiller maker to take $2.8bn hit as sales fall

Germany's Bayer AG says it expects to instrumentality a €2.5bn ($2.8bn; £2.2bn) deed from a slower request for glyphosate-based products, including its arguable weedkiller Roundup.

The announcement came arsenic the institution lowered its outlook for the year.

In all, it has acceptable speech implicit $15bn (£11.7bn) to settee lawsuits alleging its herbicides are linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and different cancers.

Bayer has denied wrongdoing but said the payouts would extremity "uncertainty".

Bayer said this was chiefly owed "a important further diminution successful income of glyphosate-based products."

The steadfast besides forecast that its pre-tax profits could autumn to arsenic debased arsenic €11.3bn this year, compared to the €13.5bn it reported successful 2022.

Roundup was primitively launched by US steadfast Monsanto astir 5 decades ago. It became known the world's best-selling weedkiller.

In 2018, Bayer bought Monsanto successful a $63bn deal. The tie-up gave Bayer power of much than a 4th of the planetary proviso of seeds and pesticides.

The aforesaid year, a California tribunal issued the archetypal ruling linking Roundup to crab and awarded important compensation to claimants.

In the lawsuits, Roundup users blamed the weedkiller and its progressive constituent glyphosate for their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and different cancers.

In March past year, the institution said it had resolved 107,000 retired of astir 138,000 cases involving Roundup.

"The Roundup colony is the close enactment astatine the close clip for Bayer to bring a agelong play of uncertainty to an end," Bayer's main enforcement Werner Baumann said successful 2020.

He repeated the company's presumption that the subject indicates: "Roundup does not origin cancer, and therefore, is not liable for the illnesses alleged successful this litigation".

Glyphosate is the progressive constituent successful galore weedkillers, though the subject astir its information is inactive acold from conclusive.

Some countries person banned herbicides that incorporate glyphosate, portion others proceed to let them.

In the UK, determination is nary nationwide prohibition connected glyphosate, though immoderate councils successful the state person stopped utilizing it owed to information concerns.

Bayer is acceptable to study net connected 8 August. The institution did not instantly respond to a BBC petition for remark connected Tuesday.