From animal feed to bread and croissants!
Hello blog, I’m back!
So it’s finally my turn to blog again and a lot has happened since last time! After I finished my project in Stockholm at GF, I moved to Malmö to work with profitability of animal feed with fixed prices. But what is that and why the focus on fixed prices?
The farmer has the possibility to purchase animal feed for several months ahead at a fixed price, opposed to the alternative, which is to buy smaller portions of feed whenever the farmer needs it, with an updated price every time. With a fixed price, the farmer won’t be exposed to the risk of an increase of the feed price, which is based on the raw materials going in to the feed. In order to be profitable, Lantmännen needs to set the right fixed price and my job was to see how we could optimize that process as well as follow up on it. It wasn’t easy, but I learned so much! For example, I learned a bit about hedging commodities in the global market in order to secure a certain price for a certain raw material, but also about controlling, different roles at feed and how we produce and price feed.
Me and my happy team during period 2 in Malmö
As of now, I am located in Belgium with Unibake and I am working in Londerzeel. Here in Londerzeel, Lantmännen Unibake has a bread factory which is completely new and rebuilt, as it sadly burned down in the summer of 2015. My project is about exploring the possibilities to develop a new sales channel in Belgium and/or the Netherlands. This means that I get to explore the Belgian and Dutch bread- and pastry-market by visiting different cities within these countries, which is a lot of fun!
During this period, I am staying in Antwerp, a beautiful city located in the north of Belgium. It is almost like a smaller version of Paris! Here I have found new friends trough an expat community and I have joined a local Cross Fit club where I am surrounded by happy people that always cheer on each other during workouts. Apart from that, I have also got to know some of my great colleges here and we sometimes meet up for different activities, usually involving some kind of eating. One of my colleges is Petra, who just moved from our agriculture business in Malmö to Unibake here in Londerzeel. In Malmö she worked with controlling and now she will be working with marketing, which I believe is a great example of the different possibilities within Lantmännen!
Brunching with colleges on a day off 🙂
Lunch at the office with Gerald, Katleen and Petra!
Some of the delicious temptations at the Londerzeel office!