Hi blog!

This week it’s me, Hugo, who will tell you about my first time at Lantmännen and my position for the first rotation, which took me to Swecon.  For those of you that are not fully familiar with the construction equipment industry (as me for example, at least not yet!), Swecon is the reseller of Volvo Construction Equipment in Sweden, a large part of Germany and the Baltic states.  I will be stationed at the Swecon Headquarters which is located in the same building as the Lantmännen HQ in Stockholm, which also means moving back to my home town after five years of studies in Linköping, exciting!

A Volvo wheel loader at the Nordbau fair in Germany

At Swecon I will conduct a market and competition analysis within the mySwecon-project, which is a digital platform developed to give the customer an overview of its machine fleet, and simplify and digitize the customer’s relation with Swecon. For me, somewhat of a rookie in both digitization and (especially) construction equipment it’s been all about diving into an ocean of new terms and concepts in order to get an understanding of the task and structure the execution of the project. This will certainly be a recurring theme during the trainee program and it feels really exciting to get the chance to explore a number of completely new territories during the upcoming 15 months!

The first three weeks have been just as fun as hectic, and already at the second day at Swecon we went to Germany to participate at Nordbau, a large fair for construction equipment, exhibiting everything from wheelbarrows to excavators. Really an amazing start in order to get an initial understanding of what the business and competition is all about! At Nordbau mySwecon had a booth in the Swecon-tent in order to show customers the soon-to-be-launched mySwecon, and even myself held a few customer demonstrations.

Me (left) discussing all the perks of a digital platform in general, and mySwecon especially, with Robert (my instructor and former trainee) and Christina

So in short, it was a couple of days full of learning, customers educated about the mySwecon-platform and me picking up my first german words: baumaschinen (construction equipment), kraftstoffverbrauch (fuel consumtion) and betriebstunden (operating hours), who would have thought! 🙂

That’s all from me now, take care & stay tuned!

A warm hello from sunny Norrköping,

Vanessa is here and on this post, I am really excited to share my experience as a trainee at Lantmännen!

For my first rotation, I get the privilege to do the assignment at Lantmännen Agroetanol, an energy division located at Norrköping, eastern Sweden. (Fun fact: Agroetanol is the largest bioerefinery in the Nordics with production of almost 25 tonnes of bioethanol (yes, that fuel that you add to your gasoline) per hour!). Apart from bioethanol, we are also producing feed products for livestocks and liquified CO2 known as carbonic acid that attracts customers from food industry.

For my assignment, I will investigate the traceability of protein content in our feed products, right from the delivery of the raw materials up to the loading of logistics to the customers. Sounds trivial, but I can assure you it is absolutely not :p

The perks of working on a production site: this is my everyday view at work. In front of distillation tanks.

This field is completely new for me, but this is when the fun parts come 🙂 My project instructor has given me a free space so I can decide how I would like to execute this project. Therefore, I could be creative, show some initiatives, and point out critical points since this project is basically my “playground”, but of course from time to time I still need his supervision. Also an important part in this project is networking. To be able to collect data, I need to talk to a lot of people from different professional areas. This is the part where I got to polish my communication skills and an opportunity to start building contacts. Some can be approached through lunch, mails, or as simple as coming by their offices. To have their various insights and linking them together on this project is interesting but also tricky 😉 All in all, so far I can say Agroetanol provides a friendly environment and a welcoming atmosphere for a new employee like me.

In front of fermentation tanks, where all the magic happens

For me, being a trainee (even though it has been 2 weeks only) is definitely pushing me out of my boundaries, in a good way of course 🙂 I don’t mind at all because I realize this is one of the ways to enhance self-development, so I am up for the challenges! Bring it on!

Time to wrap up my post and head straight to the weekend!

Until next time,

Vanessa

A big welcome to Lantmännen’s trainee blog! During the following 15 months you will be able to follow nine excited, eager and curious trainees during our rotations within the Lantmännen group.

It has now been little more than a week since our three introduction days that initiated the programme. These were spent at Säby Säteri (40 min outside Sthlm) and were packed with fun! Interesting lectures about the company´s vision and strategy, its diverse business and the strengths of dedicated owners (25 000 farmers!) were alternated with team building, farm visit, photo shoots, and meetings with parts of the Group Management Team and former trainees.

After leaving the introduction days filled up with Lantmännen-wisdom, new friends and latest clothing trends (see picture for proof) it was time to relocate to start our first 3-month position.

Johanna, Anton, Vanessa, Johan, Sebastian, Lovisa
Moa, Hugo, Hampus (Program Manager), Mikkel

So, who are we? Here’s a short presentation about our background and our first position at Lantmännen:

• Johanna
  • Education:
    • KTH Royal Institute of Technology
    • MSc. in Industrial Engineering and Management
    • Specialization: Efficient Energy Utilization
  • First trainee position:
    • Common Function, Brand and Communication, Stockholm
    • Further dev of Lantmännen cutivation concept Climate & Nature
• Anton
  • Education:
    • Linköping University
    • MSc. in Industrial Engineering & Management, International (Chinese)
    • Specialization: Biotechnology, Strategic management and corporate governance
  • First trainee position:
    • Agriculture, Malmö
    • Commodities climate performance as a competetive advantage

• Vanessa
  • Education:
    • Chalmers University of Technology
    • MSc. in Industrial Ecology
  • First trainee position:
    • Energy, Agroetanol, Norrköping
    • The effect of raw material variation in a biorefinery
• ​Johan
  • Education:
    • Stockholm School of Economics
    • MSc in Accounting & Financial Management
    • Specialization in Accounting & Financial Management and Finance
  • First trainee position:
    • Food, Unibake, Copenhagen
    • Execution of innovation strategy
• ​Sebastian
  • Education:
    • Uppsala University
    • MSc. in Business and Economics in Strategic Marketing Management
  • First trainee position:
    • R&D, AS-Faktor, Stockholm
    • Functional and medical foods in Sweden and internationally

• Lovisa
  • Education:
    • Lund University School of Economics and Management
    • MSc. in Accounting and Finance
    • Specialization: Accounting and Management Control
  • First trainee position
    • Food, Cerealia, Stockholm
    • Financial planning development
• Moa
  • Education:
    • Linköping University
    • M.Sc. in Electrical engineering
  • First trainee position:
    • Increase sales of the right products by improving the Product Information Management platform
    • Food, Unibake, Copenhagen
• Hugo
  • Education:
    • Linköping University
    • MSc. in Industrial Engineering and Management
    • Specialization: Supply Chain Management, Mechanical Engineering
  • First trainee position:
    • Swecon, Stockholm
    • Global competition and market analysis for mySwecon
• Mikkel
  • Education:
    • Copenhagen Business School
    • MSc. in Business, Language & Culture – Business & Development Studies
    • Specialization: International Business & Economic Development
  • First trainee position:
    • Food, Cerealia, Stockholm
    • Re-position the MIX portfolio in the Nordics

Hope you will follow us throughout the program for interesting updates from each of our position, stay tuned! 🙂