Euroseeds Congress 2022 - Olivier Paul

So I would say new, yes, but with a long history in seed business. Sure, so yes, for sure we've been a new company, Lidea company, two years ago. It's first of all a human adventure, intense for sure, but kept people in his care aspect in merging two companies. So the key issue was to onboard people with a clear project, customer-centric. The idea is to bring value to farmers, to have a pipeline of innovation in order to supply farmers to meet their challenges with environmental issues, for instance. So that's what we are trying to build at the moment. It's a lot of changes for the people with this new organization, new processes, new IT system. So we are not perfect yet, we know it, we are on the way too. And the keyword in the company is to be better each day, and that's the commitment of all our employees. And I strongly believe that through our employees we will be able to be a major company in the future.

I don't know if I'm going to share some critical data, but what I would say is that once again, people are key in the project and in innovation. In the innovation process, we are a farmer company now. Our shareholders are many farmers, most of our large part of our employees are also farmers or are from farmer families. So I strongly believe that through that close link to farmers, we are able to better understand their needs, their difficulties, and through that we should be able to give a better answer to their problems. So that's why we have created in Lidea what we call Fresh Ideas. Fresh Ideas is solutions and innovating processes, and we have a one-month Fresh Ideas sprint where people can express themselves with ideas so that we can offer new services, new solutions to farmers. So this is the process, and then we select the ones we think will be the most appropriate and we decide to develop them. So there are many possibilities, and we work on biostimulants, we work on genetics, we work also on combination of crops because we are a multi-crop company. We are also using a lot of cover crops and alfalfa in order to give solutions to farmers in the corporation, but also in order to help them to face the environmental issues with carbon capture, with less fertilizer, with climate changes. So we think through genetics and the right collaboration in crops we are able to give them solutions, and that's the aim of the company now.

Oh, it has been a shock for everybody. I mean, we are operating in both countries, Russia and Ukraine, so as a matter of fact we are divided in the east and the west. Russia and Ukraine, our teams were working together, so it has been some kind of drama for us to see that happen. First of all, our main topic was to make sure our people were safe. So we have more than 400 people working in Ukraine, so that was the major topic, to make sure they were safe, they were at home. We stopped the factory for more than a month. And I must admit, I was very proud of what happened in the country and outside the country because there was a huge mobilization of all our teams all over Europe, in France for sure, but at the borders in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, I must forget some, but people were there at the border in order to welcome refugees, families of our employees. And that was a real pride for me. And the second one is that our teams locally asked us to go back to work because it was time to sow, because farmers locally were asking for seeds. And so we started the factory again, we found a shelter so that they were able to find a safe place in case of an air alert. And they restarted the business, and half of our business has been done after the start of the conflict there. So I'm very impressed, they are so brave, so resilient, and so willing to make the local agriculture part of the war effort, to make the main agriculture not collapse. And that was something very wonderful for me to see them act like this. But for sure it's not finished, and that's a real topic for us, making sure they are still all safe, and we are managing the situation the best way we can. We have a dairy farm also in Ukraine, so it has never stopped because we have to milk cows every day, so we've been able to supply also free milk, some meat also to the local population. And in order to help farmers to restart their sowing, we also offered seeds. And now we are waiting for the country to try to do its best in order to continue pursuing its agricultural effort, but we know that the situation is still very difficult, and we are all praying for peace in the very short term.

That's really impressive because I remember some commercial people waiting all night long in their car at the border with food in the car, with jackets, so that they are able to welcome people arriving. They never know what time they will be able to cross the border, they spend hours in their car, nights in their car, but they did it. And it's more than 1,000 people, 1,100 people that were welcomed at the border. And that's I'm really proud of that for sure. Seeing such a commitment of our employees, I strongly believe that Lidea will be a success because I have the right people working for Lidea.

Um, so my pleasure.