INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ André van Troost, CEO Lely
“Automation adoption is going fast”
Dutch agricultural machine manufacturer Lely appointed André van Troost as CEO at the start of this year. Here he gives us an update on the company and the impact of Covid-19, tells us about upcoming launches and lets us in on his views of automation in the farming sector.
BY ZANA VAN DIJK A
utomation is everywhere and on farm it brings bene- fits such as improved profitability and better animal health and welfare. It also allows a more sustainable approach. CEO André van Troost gives us an inside
view at the company that is a market leader in producing milking robots and has had a hand in the evolution of dairy automation.
You took over as CEO on 1 January – with this new role, what were the top priorities that you wanted to tackle? One of the first things I had to tackle was how to get through the pandemic. But when I initially started I had already been with Lely for six years prior to the CEO position. So when I got the job it wasn’t that I wanted to do it in a totally different way. The first fac- tor I wanted to continue to build on was innovation. We want to continue to innovate for our farmers in terms of enjoyability,
profitability and sustainability. This is by far priority number one. Also we want to increase our customer-centricity, so we work with dedicated Lely franchises. We are growing very rapidly. We aspire to keeping our customers satisfied: building and placing products is only one part; making great strides in the service channel is also very important to us.
Adoption of automation is going very quickly
now. Most new purchases on dairy farms now are related to automation.
Another focus is to find good people who are happy to work. It’s part of our Route 25 strategy which we as a board have created and implemented. It sounds like a cliché but I believe that without good people we will not get anywhere, so this is really important for us to maintain. Of course then when the pandemic hit, it be- came about the day-to-day management of the business – how to keep the company going in tough times.
The Lely Astronaut A5, which was launched in 2018. 6 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 3, 2020
How did Covid-19 impact the business? We are a machinery business – so our operations department stayed open. Our factories stayed open and they had to work in a
PHOTOS: LELY
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