5Q’s: ForFarmers’ COO discusses acquisition of Van Triest

Rob Kiers joined ForFarmers in 2021 as Director Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A). In September 2021, he became a member of the ForFarmers Executive team as Director Strategy and M&A. In June, 2023, he was appointed COO of ForFarmers.

ForFarmers announced that it has concluded an agreement regarding the acquisition of the Dutch company Van Triest Veevoeders , specialised in the trading of co-products. Rob Kiers COO ForFarmers answers 5 questions (5Q’s) regarding the acquisition and the company’s strategy.

Why is ForFarmers investing in this market segment?

With this transaction, we are taking an important step in expanding our co-products business. This acquisition therefore fits very well into our strategy to lower the carbon footprint of dairy, meat and eggs at an affordable price.

Increasing the use of co-products and thereby reducing our own and our customers’ carbon footprint. In this way we enhance circularity.

What type of co-products are we talking about?

Co-products from breweries, dairy, bioethanol and potato processing industries (like: Brewer’s grains, potato pulp, silage maize and wet beet pulp).

The animal feed industry has been using co-products for a long time, is there still room for improvement? Or is it a matter of communication?

It’s both, making sure that you are able to provide our customers with an even better and broader range of Co-products and explaining how this will contribute to our ambitions to enhance circularity. Our farmers, and livestock farming complete the food cycle.

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This acquisition fits into our strategy to lower the carbon footprint

ForFarmers’ mission is: “For the Future of Farming.” Can you define this?

The mission of ForFarmers is For the Future of Farming. We want to support farmers to achieve good returns and a robust long-term business model by our knowledge, advice and products on farm. We focus on the following pillars:

Reducing our own and our customers’ carbon footprint;
Bringing more and more co-products back into the food chain and in this way enhance circularity;
Protecting biodiversity

In doing so, we take responsibility for affordable and sustainable food.

Van Triest is mainly focused on the Dutch market, are there plans to expand internationally?

We already sell co-products in Belgium, Germany and the UK. In general, we want to strengthen our position, by also adding more co-products to our compound feed and selling more on farm.