Nedap Livestock Management develops technological solutions for individual animal monitoring and management for the global dairy and pig farming industries.

Developments in dairy farming in 2022

Livestock Management is a leading player in the global dairy farming industry with technological solutions for cow monitoring, identification, and management. CowControl provides insights into the reproduction and health status of individual cows and lets a farmer locate specific cows who need special attention or treatment. MilkingControl offers insights into milk production data for individual cows and optimises the milking process. FarmControl optimises the identification, feeding, and sorting processes. Livestock Management boasts an extensive distribution network of business partners, including the leading global and local players in milking technology and genetics.
Austin Webster, Dairy Farmer at Way-Mor Dairy, United States

Nedap MilkingControl enables us to monitor cow health on an individual basis. Thanks to this system, we can keep the most profitable cows in the herd for as long as possible. It has improved our milking time, freeing up time for us to spend on other things on the farm or on each other.

nedap-austin-webster

Market development

Demand for dairy products continues to grow worldwide. In order to be able to meet this growing demand, efficient milk production is crucial. In addition increasing farm size, labour and resource shortages, growing concern for animal welfare, and louder calls for transparency in the supply chain are driving the need for automation and management data within dairy farming. And as such also a greater demand for Livestock Management’s solutions.

While Livestock Management showed strong performance in North America, South America, China and Ireland, component shortages meant Nedap was unable to keep up with rising demand. In order to mitigate the effect of component shortages Livestock Management has spared no effort in optimising its operations, procurement, component modifications, and component selection.

Intensification of collaboration with business partners

Livestock Management invested heavily in collaboration with its business partners in the past financial year. In order to provide business partners with the best possible support and to be able to respond faster and more effectively to specific needs in the various market areas, Livestock Management has recruited employees to set up and to reinforce local teams in Africa, China, the Middle East, and North and South America.

In addition, the business unit stepped up its collaboration in the area of partner marketing. Targeted (online) marketing campaigns have contributed to the success of all parties involved and led to increased SmartTag technology adoption, which is a key success factor in 2022.

In 2022, Livestock Management also launched a pilot with ‘Nedap LearnSpace’, an extensive training programme intended to further raise and assure business partners’ knowledge levels. This pilot has successfully been brought to a close and ‘Nedap LearnSpace’ will be rolled out at multiple business partners in 2023.

Innovations

After an intensive development process, the ‘Nedap SmartFlow’ (milk flow meter) was successfully launched in 2022. The fact that milk can flow ‘freely’ through this milk flow meter optimises the milking process, resulting in better udder health. The SmartFlow is completely wireless and is therefore relatively easy to install in both new and existing milking parlours. On top of that, the SmartFlow is very low maintenance compared to other milk flow meters. Alongside the existing on-premise solutions, the ‘Nedap Now’ cloud platform was successfully launched in 2022. Nedap Now enables dairy farmers to perform detailed data analysis, store more historical data, and combine data from multi-site dairy farms. This cloud solution easily interfaces with third-party systems, making it much simpler to share insights across the value chain.

Pig farming

With Nedap ProSense, Nedap PorkSense, and Nedap SowSense, the Livestock Management business unit offers solutions for various phases of production in pig farming. The difficult market conditions that arose in mid-2021 persisted in 2022. Revenue from the pig farming proposition dropped in 2022. COVID-19 slowed down revenue development in China, which is the largest market for the pig farming proposition. Livestock Management saw investment appetite fall in all regions. In Asia, this is mainly the result of African swine flu, while European pig farms were reluctant to invest due to rising costs of feed and energy that could not be offset by revenue.
Following year-round in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the pig farming market and the potential this market offers us, we concluded that the pig farming market is and will continue to be volatile. In addition, the major differences between the geographic markets are making marketing a highly complex and labour-intensive undertaking. As a result, it is particularly difficult for Nedap to build and scale up to the kind of position in this market that offers prospects for sufficiently attractive financial results, even in the long term. Based in part on these observations, Nedap decided to bring investments in product development and commercial activities into line with the prospects we see in the market.

Results and outlook

In 2022, dairy farming solutions showed solid revenue growth, despite the impact of component shortages. Livestock Management sees opportunities for its dairy farming solutions to keep growing in all markets in 2023 too. The degree to which the business unit will be able to seize these growth opportunities still depends on component availability. In 2023, efforts to make the supply chain more robust are expected to tentatively start to bear fruit, leading Livestock Management to expect further revenue growth for 2023.

In the pig farming domain, the business unit foresees a drop in revenue.

Sustainable impact

Nedap Livestock Management’s dairy farming solutions contribute to better cow health and higher operational efficiency on dairy farms, empowering farmers to reduce carbon emissions per litre of milk produced. Additionally, Nedap’s solutions contribute to animal welfare.