More customers than ever put their trust in DeLaval

DeLaval broke new sales records in 2022, with more customers putting their trust in us to help increase their farm productivity and make sustainable food production possible.

We continue to see great customer demand for our products, solutions and services. This is being driven by the growing global need for milk, which is fuelled by population growth, increasing life expectancy, urbanisation and the growing middle class. The global demand for milk is reflected in our order intake, which reached a record high during the year. Sales growth for the DeLaval Group amounted to 7.8 per cent and customer orders grew by 8.4 per cent.

Overcoming challenges during the year

As with many other companies, we faced significant challenges related to inflation and supply chain disruption during the year. Without key raw materials and components, we had to be creative to find new solutions to serve our customers and by finding alternative business partners. Faced with higher inflation, we were able to absorb some of our cost increases in 2022, although we had to pass on increased costs to the market.

The resilience of DeLaval and our business partners were key factors that helped us overcome these challenges, along with the diligence and dedication of our employees. This meant that we were able to keep customer delays to a minimum despite the extreme challenges we faced.

We continue to support our colleagues in Ukraine in various ways, as well as providing Ukrainian farmers with our products, services and other support. We also work with the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture and donated to the Ukrainian Agrarian Council during the year.

Sustainability – an integral part of our strategy

Sustainability is a cornerstone of our strategy as it is key to future-proofing farms. DeLaval’s offering not only allows farmers to do more with less and reduce their environmental impact through more optimal farm management, but also promotes better animal well-being, enables greater traceability, and helps to overcome labour shortages.

During the year, DeLaval has increased its efforts to help create more resilient farms that can cope with increased instability and our contribution to a sustainable development is significant. Naturally, we also work to limit the impact from our own operations.

“Our product innovation is driven by sustainability – to ultimately drive more sustainable milk production while promoting greater animal welfare. How we design the next generation of our products and solutions can play a key role in more sustainable dairy production.”  

Hamra Farm

Our demonstration farm, Hamra Farm in Sweden, is a huge asset to DeLaval that showcases our latest solutions. It is also an R&D centre where we test our products. We began planning the redevelopment of our farm during the year with the aim to create a more modern and sustainable dairy with new barns, new automatic milking robots (DeLaval VMS^™) and more digital solutions to further improve animal health, quality and efficiency.

We have always focused on our animals and their well-being at Hamra Farm. But this redevelopment will take our farm to a new level – to both lead by example and drive positive change in the industry. The redeveloped farm will continue to be a world-class meeting place for dairy professionals around the world.

New products launched in 2022

We introduced several exciting new products onto the market during the year. These included more versions of our E-series rotary milking parlour that provides more information and automation features for even greater efficiency.

We also introduced new improvements to our DeLaval VMS^™ V300 series as well as our revolutionary DeLaval Evanza^™ milking cluster, which is not only faster and more efficient, but is better for cows and farm employees.

Our product innovation is driven by sustainability – to ultimately drive more sustainable milk production while promoting greater animal welfare. How we design the next generation of our products and solutions can play a key role in a more sustainable dairy production.

Outlook for 2023

We expect the macroeconomic uncertainty to continue in 2023 with short-term market instability. The long-term trends of sustainability, automation and digitalisation will remain and provide opportunities for us to continue our growth journey in the years ahead.

With our passionate colleagues and business partners, we are well positioned to make sustainable food production possible for our customers. By collaborating with all our value chain partners, as well as other stakeholders, we continue to drive our sustainability agenda forward while pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the dairy industry as a whole.

Paul Löfgren