DeLaval equips largest livestock research centre in Europe at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

“SLU in Sweden will have Europe’s most modern facility for teaching and research on cows, pigs and poultry. SLU has a long tradition of providing important research for our business on how to improve animal welfare and dairy production; we believe that the new Swedish Livestock Research Centre will even further enhance the quality of the research that is done today”, says Joakim Rosengren President & CEO, DeLaval.

The new centre will work with both the DeLaval Voluntary Milking System (VMS) and the recently launched DeLaval Automatic Milking Rotary (AMR™) system in addition to a wide range of DeLaval products and solutions that are integral to the DeLaval Smart Farming concept. The DeLaval Smart Farming strategy aims at influencing and shaping the future of dairy farming; it is about innovative – and not least integrated – decision tools and automation that support farm management. Smart Farming aims to accelerate the transition from milking management to global farm profitability management by harnessing emerging decision tools and automation technologies for better quality milk and profits.

DeLaval AMR™ was developed with three key customer benefits in mind; profitability, farm management, and flexibility. The main components of AMR^™ are teat preparation, cup attachment and teat-spray modules, two touch screens to operate the system, automatic cup back flush, automatic floor cleaning, and safety systems. The first AMR^™ systems will have an up to 90 cows/hour capacity, depending on the number of robots installed. As many as five robots can be attached to the rotary. The system will be fully operational at Lövsta in November.

“We have a long standing cooperation with DeLaval on numerous research projects. In the bidding process to supply equipment to the Swedish Livestock Research Centre DeLaval offered the most competitive solution” says Kerstin Svennersten Sjaunja, dean at SLU’s Faculty for Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science.

The opening ceremony will be held in the late spring of 2012.

Background Information

About DeLaval Smart Farming

For DeLaval farm profitability is about total farm management and that is what we call Smart Farming. Our idea is that dairy farmers can obtain results through many small changes to make dairy farming a more profitable business. To that end, we have identified 7 core profitability areas: 1 is herd management because the more dairy farmers really know about their herd, the more they can increase the farm’s profitability; 2 is feeding because the better dairy farmers optimize feed conversion, the higher their profitability; 3 is milkingbecause by milking smarter, with lower labor costs, greater profitability is achieved; 4 is cooling because by sustaining and enhancing milk quality with the right cooling process, profits are increased even more; 5 is animal welfare because keeping animals in top health lifts productivity and milk quality; 6 is barn environment because creating the best barn environment for the cows and workers enhances farm productivity and profitability; 7 is services because with the staff and the equipment in action 365 days a year, first class maintenance and service proactively contributes to consistent profitability.

About Lövsta

Every year over 200 students begin their studies at The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science. All the undergraduate and postgraduate students will spend time at the facility at Lövsta at some point during their education. The faculty also offers international Master programs.

Manure from the animal housing will be processed in a biogas unit and a small scale slaughterhouse will be built adjacent to the facility.