After five years of growth and multiple acquisitions, Elanco Animal Health has announced its new strategy to service the poultry markets. At a press conference at the 2015 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE), Kerryann Kocher, director, U.S. Poultry Operations, explained how the company came up with its Full Value Poultry business strategy.
She explained that Elanco conducted a global survey across all animal species to identify the core profit drivers. She said the company has concluded there are four elements that cross all species – health, output, feed and access.
“Health is obvious: identify and manage diseases,” said Kocher, “Feed is optimizing feed for the highest efficiency. Output is making sure you have the right bird at the right time for the right market. That’s the hard part, managing the variation in the production process.”
Elanco defines the fourth factor, access, as the ability to seize global market opportunities by helping to understand and manage regulatory influences, consumer and political influence and global trade.
“Our approach is to serve the customer based on those four pillars,” said Kocher. “We put together teams from across our divisions that can help the customer manage all four of those challenges.”
This approach has been made possible by Elanco’s string of acquisitions over the last five years – culminating with the closing of the acquisition of Lohmann Animal Health early this year. “The ChemGen acquisition in 2012 got us into the enzyme market and Agri Stats in 2013 gave us the ability to help our customers enhance their analytics abilities, which are vital in today’s markets”
“Elanco is seeking to be a total solutions provider across the poultry chain,” said Kocher. “Poutlry producers have to have all of their systems optimized to maintain sustainable profitability. It’s Elanco’s goal to help them do that with our team approach.”
Elanco continues to invest in the market. Kocher said Elanco has just broken ground on a $15 million research center that will house 75 scientists at the company’s Greenfield, Indiana, headquarters.
