mix manufacturing capability associated with
our Chinese joint venture company, United-Liuhe Co. Ltd. In 2006, JBS United added a
poultry marketing team, including a nutrition
marketing specialist in South America.
Palacios: Land O’Lakes Purina Feed is
continuing to focus on the value we bring to
our customers and to invest behind our well-recognised and trusted brands. Our supply
chain capabilities provide our customers with
a national footprint that is founded on quality
and service. As the innovator in products like
milk replacers and feeding limiters for ruminants, we believe that there is a place in the
changing commercial market for technology
that improves performance for the animal as
well as convenience for the producer. We
have made a sizeable investment in our
research facility at Longview, Gray Summit,
Missouri to bring new ideas to the dairy,
cattle, horse, swine and companion animals
industry. In addition, we are actively assisting
our dealers and co-operatives to meet the
increasing needs of the suburban customer
through new products and new and improved
retail locations.
decisions. Finally, we’re investing in initiatives
at the plant level like the use of robots in automation, and in our goal to create a world-class
safety culture. We know that giving people a
safe working environment and the right tools
will go a long way to ensuring we can continue
to attract and retain talent.
Then we’re making sure that we always
look down the road to see the issues that lie
ahead. We were the first in North America
to be fully HACCP and ISO 9001 approved.
And we have rigorous biosecurity protocols
in place that allow us to adapt our operations
to a rise in threat levels. We’re also making
certain that our products and programmes
are aligned to emerging trends. For example,
we were a market leader in developing products and programmes for natural production
niches, for use with ethanol co-products, in using block supplementation to better manage
grazing patterns in sensitive environments,
in biodegradable packaging, and the list
goes on.In the end, it’s all about having a well
thought-out plan, empowered and engaged
people with tools and information, and a sense
of urgency to execute.
▼
VanRoekel: We’ve put ourselves in a
good position over the last five years in several
ways. Our volume is well balanced across
each of the meat, milk, and egg production,
and companion animal and equine segments;
and geographically across the major livestock
markets in Canada and the U.S. Our earnings
are nearly equally distributed between our
specialty and traditional businesses. When
the operating environment is challenging in
one segment or geography, it’s usually strong
in several others.
How we’re organised is also important
to success. We believe in a decentralised
operations structure, which allows our businesses to operate independently. It allows
them to respond more quickly to customers
and innovate to meet the customer’s needs.
Then we aggressively centralise administration. This allows us to take advantage of
our size to keep our administration and raw
material costs as low as possible. We think
our competitive advantage lies in combining
the resources of a large company with the
flexibility of a small company to best meet the
customer’s needs.
To address the manpower issue, we’re
investing very heavily in a variety of programmes and areas, starting with a variety
of orientation, training, and development
programmes for our employees. We’re also investing in upgrading our information systems
to give our managers and employees good
information from which they can make good
