DeLaval’s dairy farming outlook by Hammer

How sustainability shapes on-farm tech demand

Founded in 1883 by Gustaf de Laval, DeLaval is a global leader in dairy farming technology and part of the Tetra Laval Group. Headquartered in Tumba, Sweden, DeLaval has built a legacy of innovation with a focus on animal welfare, environmental responsibility, and farm profitability.

In order to remain a frontrunner within the dairy farming sector, DeLaval approached Hammer to identify prominent on-farm sustainability technologies. This enabled DeLaval to gain insight into the challenges of current and future dairy farms, as well as into the regions where innovative technologies would be most likely to thrive.

“Being able to track all emerging technologies within the dairy sector and early identify the ones aligning with our strategy was the main objective of this project. The need to map them was the key reason for entering this research.”
Nikolai Porkhov – Head of Strategic Market Intelligence, DeLaval

Assessing global readiness for sustainable technology adoption

The first part of the research focused on understanding regional readiness and technology potential across six major dairy producing regions across the globe. To ensure alignment, Hammer and DeLaval maintained weekly update sessions, which allowed for timely input and iterative refinements as insights emerged.

As a first step, the main sustainability topics in the dairy farming sector were identified. Subsequently, each region was scored on these topics, indicating how important each topic is per region. Additionally, each region has been assessed using three adoption-related topics, which indicated to what extent farmers in the regions are able to adopt on-farm sustainability technologies.

The results allowed DeLaval to (1) identify where sustainability technologies are most needed, based on the importance of the relevant sustainability-topic and (2) where the technologies are most likely to be adopted successfully, considering infrastructure, farm scale and regional policy environments.

‍Sustainable technology identification around the globe

In parallel, we identified a broad set of on-farm sustainability technologies. These technologies were then assessed based on (1) their alignment with sustainability drivers, (2) geographical fit and (3) compatibility with different farm infrastructures.

This approach not only showed which technologies are available, but also how well they fit into the real-world context of different farms around the globe: from large-scale operations in the U.S. to mid-sized farms in Europe and emerging markets in Latin America or Southeast Asia. This resulted in a clear overview for DeLaval depicting the relevance of these technologies for different regions.

An important addition to the research was a characterization of the companies developing these technologies. Developers and producers of these technologies were classified as rising stars, frontrunners or anywhere in between. This allowed DeLaval to clearly see who is shaping the field, who is catching up, how they position against competitors and where potential partnerships and collaborations may emerge.

“The research provided a valuable overview of the sustainability investment drivers at farm-level. Hammer managed to accurately visualize the landscape of both existing and emerging technologies addressing these drivers.”
‍Nikolai Porkhov – Head of Strategic Market Intelligence, DeLaval

‍From data to direction

The primary goal of the study was to provide DeLaval with a detailed overview of the current and future state of sustainability technologies in dairy farming. The study has clearly succeeded in achieving this goal, and also shows which on-farm sustainability technologies have most relevance in which regions. The generated insights informed DeLaval’s business development strategy and aided in identifying opportunities for growth in the dairy farming sector.

“Throughout the project process, collaboration with Hammer has been professional and responsive. Ultimately, we achieved our goal as the outcome has supported our decision-making process on strategic business development opportunities.”
Nikolai Porkhov – Head of Strategic Market Intelligence, DeLaval

Curious how market intelligence can help your company navigate sustainability trends and identify innovation opportunities? Get in touch with Hammer to explore how we can support your strategic decision-making via:
+31 85 333 2472 or jerom@hammer-intel.com.

This article has been written by Jerom van de Kraats.