European Seed (ES): You are operating among many other multinational and multicultural seed companies. How does your seed company manage to be different and stand out from the competition?
EURALIS Semences and CAUSSADE Semences Group formalised their alliance on 1 September 2020 by creating LIDEA. Already one of the top 10 global field crop seed companies, the new entity aims to be a multi-crop leader in Europe.
We see this position as a major player as a new responsibility: when agriculture is undergoing fundamental changes, the seed profession takes on a new dimension. We need to think differently about seeds to help agriculture meet all the challenges it faces such as food demand, societal expectations, sustainability, climate change, etc.
In this context, we differentiate ourselves by developing our proximity to farmers, by orienting our creativity and capacity to innovate to meet their needs and by offering them personalized, sustainable and creative added value solutions.
ES: With multiple crops for multiple countries in your portfolio, how can you make sure that you satisfy all your customers?
Lidea offers a wide range of seeds: maize, sunflower, straw cereals, rapeseed, forage and plant cover, soya, sorghum, pulses and is present throughout the wider Europe. When we build solution portfolios for our brands, we consider the full range of needs of our users, including seeds and around the seeds offer. Our market managers report on farmers’ needs and, once the species range has been globally defined, adapt it to the requirements of its market, selecting the options that will be adapted to the needs of its customers. In this way, a farmer can find a solution for his entire crop rotation in our offer.
ES: How do you measure customer satisfaction?
The sales dynamics in each of our countries is a sign of the satisfaction of our customers. But that would be quite insufficient. We also want to develop a “Customer Satisfaction” process: understanding the needs of our farmer customers, measuring the level of satisfaction of these needs through our offers, and implementing solutions to improve this level of satisfaction.
ES: For a seed company to be competitive, which should be its main features?
Our competitors are global companies, born out of mergers of major players in seeds, phytosanitary products and technological innovations. To remain competitive in this environment, it is necessary to reach a critical size allowing to maintain the investment efforts in research, to deploy the production tools necessary for its activity and, to be able to promote and to supply the customized solutions. With the merger we can reach this critical size and deploy our international growth strategy.
