What capacities are needed on the part of policymakers in areas such as the agri-food biotechnology sector in order to attain excellence at the individual, organisational and systemic levels of regulatory operation? To address this question, this paper draws upon work recently carried out on regulatory excellence by the Penn Programme on Regulation and couples it with recent studies on how to build policy capacity. Derived from a multi-jurisdiction, multi-sector review of regulation, the Penn programme identified three core areas or `pillars' of regulatory excellence - namely, stellar competence, empathic engagement and utmost integrity -which reflect the kinds of individual actions of a regulator, the traits of the regulator as an organisation, and the broad systemic outcomes of regulation which are needed for excellent performance. This work does not examine what is needed on the part of public organisations to achieve these goals, however, and to this end, the paper draws upon a second set of recent studies into the various types of policy capacities that affect policy-making to illustrate what regulators must do in order to achieve excellence. Examples from agri-food biotechnology regulation are used to illustrate the concepts of, and prerequisites for, achieving regulatory capacity and excellence in this sector, although the lessons and implications are also valid in many others.