'I thought I'd go into investment banking - now I'm protecting Europe's crops from Yorkshire factory'

When Huddersfield company Grosvenor Chemicals fell into administration in 2018 it was acquired by JT Crop. It has since embarked on a major investment of its site and even more is promised.

Managing director Jaitej Walia says the expertise of the staff in making liquid crop protection formulations including fungicide, herbicide and insecticide was the main reason JT Crop bought the site. Three-quarters of the employees from the time of the administration are still on the site.

“The site had a lot of work that needed doing,” he says. “Everything was scattered when we bought it and we have tried to make it more efficient, so filling lines are next to the formulation lines of particular category products and we are looking at bringing the quality control lab closer to the admin as well.

“When we bought it everyone was demotivated, there was hardly any work here. We bought the site because if we couldn’t get any tolling [outsourcing] business at least we could use it for our own captive consumption, which is 85 per cent of production.”

The plant at Linthwaite, in the Colne Valley, now makes seven million litres of products each year. Around two-thirds of that is exported and most to the EU.

Walia says Britain’s exit from the European Union brought a lot of misalignment for the business in terms of what paperwork was required for exports. Thankfully, a trade deal means there aren’t any customs duties for exports of pesticides to the EU so that keeps the products competitively priced.

Back in 2021, at the time of the Brexit rules implementation, JT Crop turnover was £40m, split evenly between India and the UK and Europe. As of March 2026, group turnover is now £140m. The main subsidiary is Indian-based Cropnosys, with approximately £70m in annual sales.

Walia adds: “We got about 20 registrations in Europe selling five or six different products and all selling B2B [business to business] unlike in the UK which was through a distributor. But in B2B you give away a lot of margin so we thought why not build a team who can go direct to a distributor.

“We invested in a sales and marketing team in each country where we had a registration – France, Germany, Poland and Romania. We are now working with 57 distributors in Europe compared with three in 2022.”

Walia grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. In 2012, when he was 18, his parents moved to Bangalore in India. After graduating he joined them there, working as a financial analyst for an alcohol company.

Wide Cover, the family business group and forerunner to JT Crop, was founded in 1998. From Maidenhead, Walia’s father and present chairman Gurvinder traded agri-chemicals and travelled the world. His move to be personally based in India was to start the agri-chemicals manufacturing subsidiary Cropnosys.

Jaitej decided that he preferred to work for his family’s business than someone else’s and he could see that Gurvinder needed help after losing his business partner to an unexpected death.

“Aged 21, I was sitting in all meetings with my dad, be it suppliers or customers learning everything from him – how to negotiate, how to present and how to deal with government officials. It was a good learning experience.

“My dad never put any pressure on me. He never thought the business would reach the level it has done today. He has been a great leader and allowed me to make my own choices.”

There was even a possibility that Jaitej would have left the family business entirely when he opted to do a Masters degree in accounting and finance at the London School of Economics.

“I thought I would go into investment banking because I liked numbers, how supply and demand worked and thought there was money to be made there.

“But I spoke to some peers, who were older than me and worked for investment banks, and they said that for the first five years all they did was make presentations. Being an entrepreneur, I didn’t want to do that. I thought there was more return of investment in what my dad was doing.

“After my Masters he asked me what I wanted to do. At that point we were simultaneously trying to register our own brands in Europe. I did a lot of homework on registering these and working with consultants on marketing and registrations. I thought we could have a manufacturing base in India to do synthesis or chemicals, which not a lot of the registration holders in Europe have.”

In 2017, the business got its first registrations of brand formulations in Europe. In 2022, JT Crop also started to develop biological solutions, non-chemical organic farming. Bangalore is known for its climate to harvest bacteria from the soil, so a biological research and development facility was opened there.

An Indian stock market flotation is likely to be pursued and raise cash for JT Crop’s main India subsidiary Cropnosys. Walia says: “All the other subsidiaries will benefit too. We have more money for capex investment, regulatory investment and just making this site [Huddersfield] and organisation more professional.

“There is a lot of room for potential at this site and it has some land around it so there is plenty of room to expand. The business has never been shy about investing into the site.”

The Huddersfield site now produces seven million litres of products annually, not only for agriculture but businesses as diverse as crematoriums or for railway tracks.

Walia says: “After Brexit, there might be duties on products manufactured in the EU so why not change your manufacturing base to the UK and use our facility to cater for this market? We can do anything you need to produce liquid for with a Made in the UK label here.”

This article originally appeared in The Yorkshire Post’s sister title, Yorkshire Business Insider magazine.