Profile
André van Troost has been working at Lely since 2014 af- ter a career at Procter & Gam- ble and Danone. At Lely he was the former vice president Customer Care before being appointed as the new CEO of Lely, effective 1 January 2020. He was also on the executive board for three years before becoming CEO. Van Troost took over from Alexander van der Lely who succeeded his brother Olaf in 2004 as CEO.
healthy and safe way. We had to quickly adapt and make some big changes there. Communication became a lot more transpar- ent. Our aim during this time was that everyone had the sense that they were on the same page and same journey. Communica- tion was key. Another challenge was working with customers and keeping our robots serviced. This service experience was different in every country – in one country it was carried out as if nothing had changed and in another the rules became much stricter; there certainly was no one-size-fits-all policy. I’m really proud of the way we have done it. In terms of business, there is a slight de- cline but we will manage. It could be a lot worse.
2019 was a great year for the Lely Astronaut A5 – which factors do you think played an important role in this exceptional year? Yes, we had a great year! Adoption of automation is going very quickly now. We see that most new purchases on dairy farms now are related to automation. But we also launched a great machine – and we launched the new hybrid arm which is quieter and fast- er, and attachment is easier and quicker than the A4. The A5 re- duces energy consumption by about 20%. The interface is a lot easier to use – it really is the next step in making automation even simpler to understand. In the past only a small group of farmers were open to innovation. Now we have got to a stage where the A5 is much easier to use and understand, which in turn creates a
wider group of farmers who want to make use of it. Now you have the situation where those who never thought about automation are thinking that it is the logical next step. This simplicity has cre- ated more possibilities for farmers who struggle to find employ- ees and those who want more time to do other things, and also to ensure free cow traffic.
How many projects are in the R&D phase currently, and how much of the turnover is spent on R&D? We spend about 5–6% of turnover on research; it’s a significant number. But we are innovators and R&D is in our DNA. We work on many different areas – I can’t tell you exactly which areas. In October 2020 we organise the Lely Future Farm days where we will launch a number of new innovations to the market. We are re- ally excited about that. One innovation that we will reveal more about is related to manure. And the other two I can’t tell you about at all – until October. At the core of it all we want to better the lives of our farmers. We live to innovate for farmers – I know it sounds like a cliché but this is truly our mission.
What are your thoughts on automation, and what is Lely focusing on now? I think adoption of automation will reach 90 to 100% – I am abso- lutely convinced. What I think is that there may be a lot of focus on automation on Dutch farms with 100–150 cows on average.
▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 3, 2020 7
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