Bayer CropScience and Evonik have now officially quantified their plans for a co-investment at Evonik’s production site in Mobile, Alabama, USA.

Together with Evonik, the US subsidiary of the Bayer sub-group will co-invest more than $200 million at the site in Alabama’s Theodore Industrial Park. Each company will finance one of the units that will produce precursors for the Leverkusen group’s glufosinate-ammonia Liberty herbicide, a main component of its LibertyLink weed management system.

The two German-headquartered companies will start up the plants concurrently in mid-2017. All 50 employees will be on Evonik’s payroll, US reports said. In the past, Evonik has supplied the Bayer offshoot locally.

John Smith, key account manager for Bayer CropScience’s US commercial operations, said in a statement that the expansion of the herbicide’s production is in direct response to farmers’ “urgent calls for an alternative weed control technology” to help combat the rising of weed resistance.

Smith said crops such as canola, corn, cotton and soybeans benefit from the Liberty technology – initially acquired by Bayer with its takeover of Aventis CropScience in 2003.