Hi blog! It’s me, Johanna, and I am checking in to tell you a bit about my ongoing project at Gooh!

So, I have moved back from Belgium to Stockholm and I am now working in Järna, where Gooh! is placed. In this project I am helping Gooh! to look at continuous improvements in production and how they are supposed to go about it. This means that I spend some time in production in order to see how they work and what could be improved. One example of what I have done so far is setting clear routines and standards for the daily stand-up meetings in order to make sure that we catch the most important things and act upon them –> Let’s Gooh! 😉

My project also involves study visits and meetings with people experienced with lean and continuous improvements. One highlight was to visit Scania and see their motor production. Scania have worked with lean for a long time and I can tell you, it really shows in their way of working!

As Mikkel mentioned in his blog-post, the trainee program is soon coming to an end. The program has been really great and I have enjoyed trying different roles. Before I started at Lantmännen, I thought that I would know what I wanted to work with at the end of the program and, even though I am not certain what exact role I would strive for, I know a bit more about myself and what I enjoy and not.

It is with mixed feelings that I will leave the trainee-life behind, however, it will be nice to start at a permanent position at Lantmännen and to be able to know what life will look like for a bit longer time ahead.

That was all for now!

Until next time!

/Johanna

Hallo, Bonjour, Hola, Ciao, привет, привіт, Halløj!

So you might wonder why I am using so many languages. Well, since last time I posted here at the blog, these are the languages I have encountered and I thought that I would tell you a bit more about my travels and how international Lantmännen is.

Hallo and Bonjour are both coming from the languages I hear every day here at the office in Belgium. Since last time I have had the opportunity to see the Brussels office where Unibake BeNeFrItEs had an employee gathering for all the employees. It was a great opportunity to meet employees from all the different countries within this cluster (Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain). During the evening we listened to interesting lectures, played games and attended our own street food festival with Unibake products! I thought it was particularly interesting to see examples of how to bring brands “alive” and give them a story, as compared to just telling the consumer that the product is good.

But how on earth does привет and привіт come into the picture?! Well, as Anton posted earlier, all trainees have a SGA (Strategic Group Assignment) in parallel and me, Anton and Sebastian are looking at Cerealia’s International Growth model. This project took us to Moscow, Russia and Kiev, Ukraine where Cerealia is active, in order to see how the markets are developing. In Russia, Cerealia is selling both Axa museli but also Finn Crisp. Unibake is also on the Russian market and we had the opportunity to visit their office and learn more about Russian trends. One thing that was clear was that Russian people love Georgian food and we just had to try it. I totally understand the hype, as it was one of the most delicious foods I have ever tasted! Me, Anton and Sebastian started planning on opening our own Georgian restaurant in Stockholm when we retire! Exciting times!

Off course we took the opportunity to do some sightseeing in Moscow and in Kiev we met up with Johan who is doing his third project there. He showed us around the beautiful city and you can see some of it in the pictures below.

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Above you can see some of the very beautiful buildings in Kiev!

After this trip, it was time to meet up all the other trainees in Copenhagen for a recharge = Halløj Denmark! At the end of each project we always have a recharge where we tell each other about our projects, we visit one of the businesses and see some of the production and listen to employees telling us about the business itself and about their own careers. This time we visited Unibake and we got to hear about their strategy, see bread production, as well as hear more about one employee’s interesting career. During the evening Mikkel had arranged a boat tour in Copenhagen and dinner at a great Italian restaurant! Thank you Mikkel!

Also, the evening before the recharge, eight out of nine trainees met up in Copenhagen and we went to an outdoor concert, we swam and had dinner together. And rode a lot of electric scooters.

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Above: Touring around Copenhagen 🙂

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Above: Concert and trainees enjoying dinner together!

Meeting up with all the trainees and hearing what they are up to is always so much fun! But for now, we will all have some well deserved vacation! See you in August! /Johanna

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.

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!  

Hi blog!

Now I, Johanna, is back and I have Sebastian here with me. Soon it is time for new exiting projects, but unfortunately that means that our time at the Stockholm office is ending. So, we thought that we should share some precious moments from this period with you.

Here at Stockholm office we have been five trainees and we have really gotten to know each other well over the past three months.

As we remember it, “morning sandwiches” (read breakfast) was our first routine here at the office and we had so much fun together that these routines escalated quickly. Lunch became more frequent and before we knew it everybody just showed up at noon every day to have lunch together. But wait, that’s not all! Everyone needs a short break in the afternoon, so why not take it together over a quick fika?

Okay so now we might come off as a bit codependent. At an early point our super receptionist Jörgen made us our very own fika-sign. Se the excitement over the sign in the picture below.

One thing that became clear during all the fika and lunches was that the group seemed to be very competitive and we realized we wanted to challenge each other. This led to hours spent competing in tennis, bowling, badminton, racket ball, shuffleboard and mushroom picking. Mikkel usually lost (or maybe not?).

Above: Hugo bowling, go go!

Above: Lovisa cheering on her team!

Apart from that we have had the time to celebrate some birthdays and go to some after works. But the most magical time of the year is now (Christmas is almost here) so we took the opportunity to go to a julbord (Christmas buffet) and play shuffleboard as a way to conclude this amazing first period!

Above: During Mikkel’s birthday we were invited to his fantastically beautiful apartement.

Above: Julbord with the gang.

Next week we will attend a recharge with the whole trainee group 🙂 and after that we will start our next projects. Very much looking forward to that even though we will miss each other and our current colleagues. That was all for now! Happy weekend!

 

//Sebastian & Johanna 🙂

Hello blog!

Johanna here to tell you all about my first project as a trainee at Lantmännen. I have now been working at Corporate Communications & Branding at the Stockholm headquarters where I have been well welcomed to the team. It has been a great start for me, working with the cultivation concept within Lantmännen!

 

Here’s me and my team at Corporate Communications & Branding

So, what is a cultivation concept? Lantmännen’s cultivation concept is a way of farming in a more sustainable way compared to the conventional way of farming. The farming concept aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also to increase biodiversity. This is done by establishing a number of criteria that the farmer should farm according to in exchange for a reimbursement. An example of these criteria is the implementation of skylark plots, undrilled patches in fields where larks can land and find food. Another example is to use sensors to be more precise when farming and spreading fertilizer. As of today, you can see the result of the cultivation concept in stores as Kungsörnens “Vänligare Vete” (A friendlier wheat) and “Vänligare Råg” (A friendlier rye). So if you want to eat in an even more sustainable way and support Swedish farmers at the same time, you know where to find your flour 😉

 

I flied to Malmö every now and then with this project and saw some great sunsets on my way home!

My task has been to try to decrease the complexity with the farming concept in-house and at the same time make it more unified and easier to understand for all actors in the value chain. During the project I have learned a lot about how to farm, which is a whole world of its own. So much to learn still!

By the way, did you know that a large part of greenhouse emissions that can be traced to a bag of flour in the store, comes from the cultivation stage? I sure didn’t know. I would have guessed at transport or packing, but hey that’s just me! This is why Lantmännen is working with various initiatives and projects, to make farming even more sustainable – among them the cultivation concept “Climate & Nature” that has been the focus of my past trainee period. This is actually one of the many fun things with this project, that I get to learn a lot about sustainability within farming and all the solutions there are to tackle the challenges. During these months, I have realised how innovative Lantmännen is as a company as they are constantly investigating what can be done and trying to push these new innovations to the field through the farming concept.

Another thing that I really enjoyed with my project is that I got to meet many people with different roles within Lantmännen. This has led to me getting a great start here and getting to know several new colleagues.

Our first projects are soon coming to an end and as of the beginning of December you will find me at our office in Malmö, working with profitability in fixed priced feed sales. It will be a lot more falafel and excel then, looking forward to it!

Until next time!