Campina Chooses Its Partners in Cattle Feed with Care

Cattle feed plays an important role in the safety, sustainability and composition of milk. Campina is therefore presently working closely with the cattle feed industry in three specific areas.

06/10/06 Campina works with a number of cattle feed companies to reach continued improvements in the dairy chain. Candidates to partner Campina are carefully selected. Know-how, manageability and efficiency are what counts.

“I can see a constructive and open attitude in the cattle feed sector. There’s certainly room for improvement. In the area of security and insurability for instance. And those involved are making real progress in this respect. But when it comes to sustainability and health there are also opportunities to make groundbreaking headway in the entire dairy chain and, of course, the cattle feed sector too. People are open to that. We see that the cattle feed sector is putting its know-how and expertise to work”, comments Atze Schaap, director of Member Services, one of Campina’s spearheads for the cattle feed industry.

Three initiatives

Cattle feed plays an important role in the safety, sustainability and composition of milk. Campina is therefore presently working closely with the cattle feed industry in three specific areas. Two initiatives concern the entire milk supply, the third focuses solely on liquid milk which is sold under the Campina brand in the Netherlands.

Campina’s first aim is to expand the safety guarantees of cattle feed used at all its dairy farms in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. One element of that is to develop an additional quality certificate; another is a pilot project to follow feed flows via internet and to map out the extent to which cattle feed manufacturers are insured for possible consequential loss. Five cattle feed companies and around 100 Campina dairy farms in the Netherlands are taking part in this pilot.

A second Campina initiative is to introduce the use of sustainably grown soy as cattle feed for all Campina dairy farms in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Enough, at any rate, to ultimately cover the 3.4 billion kilos of member milk plus the farm milk which Campina receives from milk suppliers.

And last, but not least, from next spring the dairy co-operative aims to give liquid milk under the Campina brand (about 200 million consumer litres) a more balanced fatty acid composition through adjusted feed in combination with outdoor grazing.

Pioneering role

Discussion partners from the cattle feed industry’s side differ from time to time, although representatives from a number of larger companies are always present at each project. “If you look at the cattle feed sector you will see that a number of larger companies, both co-operative as well as private, do pioneering work in the market. That undoubtedly has something to do with their ambitions but also with their size. A larger company usually has the knowledge and resources to work with Campina on larger projects. The same holds true for the dairy industry. We are also often approached with requests to participate in new initiatives because of our size and the importance we attach to innovation. And if we feel that there are opportunities for us either in the long or the short term, we usually join in.”

Regions

But even if you are doing business with the larger feed companies in the Netherlands or Germany, that doesn’t mean you are dealing with all the feed suppliers of the Campina members. This is because there are smaller cooperatives and private players with strong positions in certain regions. Schaap admits this and adds that it is something Campina does not ignore. “For the electronic control of feed flows, for instance, we have deliberately involved two smaller regional cooperatives in the pilot. That gives us a direct answer to the question of whether electronic control of feed flows can also be carried out by smaller companies.”

Feed companies do however occasionally approach Campina with the aim of collaborating but Campina opts not to do that. Schaap: “Of course we know that our members do business with a lot of cattle feed companies and that their relation is built on mutual trust. If, for instance, we want to realise improvements in safety and quality of cattle feed for our entire milk volume, then that would therefore also involve all cattle feed suppliers. But in a pilot we are free to cooperate with a limited number of suppliers. The same applies to Campina brand milk with a more balanced fatty acid composition. Here again everyone is equal in our eyes, but it is ultimately our members who want us to set things up in a manageable and efficient way. That means, for instance, that we have clear criteria for the minimum number of Campina brand milk farmers that we expect a cattle feed company to serve. For Campina brand milk knowledge of the right feed is very important. If a company serves more Campina brand milk farmers then you can expect them to have more know-how to support these dairy farmers in their day-to-day businesses. And that helps us to keep operations manageable and efficient.”