Farmer in Santa hat waves deuka truck (© Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer).

Every year, people rush to the shops during the week before Christmas. Everyone wants to spend Christmas relaxed and with a well-stocked fridge. Farmers also fill their animals' feed silos. As a result, feed orders rise sharply during the Advent season. In order to meet all requests, the production of compound feed is correspondingly high during this time. So is there a risk of bottlenecks and waiting times for feed orders during Advent? Don't worry! Our employees know the special requirements of the Christmas business and manage it routinely.

Early preparation and careful disposition of raw materials help to meet the rush before Christmas. The reason for the gradually increasing order volumes in December: Public holidays and company holidays in many places. In logistics and trade, the wheels do not stand still between the years, but the capacities of the industry are limited. It is therefore understandable that farmers order sufficient feed from our brands deuka, Club or Nordkraft in advance for the period between Christmas and the turn of the year.

Portrait photo_Bernd Brachtendorf (© Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer).

Early ordering and precise interaction between all departments

"The foundation for a smooth Christmas business is laid in November. Here, the smooth interaction of all departments at our locations is especially important. Above all, fast and precise coordination of sales, raw materials logistics and production is crucial," explains Bernd Brachtendorf, Regional Sales Manager Düsseldorf. "In order to guarantee the security of supply with feed, especially over the holidays, early feed ordering and disposition is particularly important. Therefore, my appeal goes out to all traders and farmers to support us again in this."

Close coordination with forwarders and shipping companies

But not only the internal coordination at Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer is important for a smooth process. "Coordination with our forwarders and shipping companies is essential for a successful Christmas business. Because without sufficient raw materials, the presses stand still," Dominik Stoffels emphasises. "Over the years, a close and well-functioning cooperation has been established with them. Since many drivers in the transport sector naturally prefer to spend the holidays at home, longer tours around Christmas are usually cancelled. We always have to take that into account," says the experienced dispatcher.

"For this 'worst case', we agree on so-called intervention reserves with external warehouses. This means that even in the rare case of a delivery failure, we can fall back on important raw materials at short notice in order to produce ordered feed as planned," Stoffels adds.

Order spikes, bottlenecks, delivery failures: Even we are not immune to everything

Adverse circumstances, force majeure or simply bad luck: despite all the preparations, optimised processes and years of experience, it can happen that the processing of orders at Christmas comes to a standstill. In order to counteract order peaks, bottlenecks and delivery failures, active precautions are also taken at the factory during the Christmas season, as Stefan Hildebrand, Silo Master at the Düsseldorf plant explains: "To counteract bottlenecks, we already fill the storage cells at our locations as well as possible as a precaution. In this way, we can easily absorb short-term order peaks or spontaneous delivery bottlenecks."

Portrait photo_Dominik Stoffels (© Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer)

Conclusion

  • During the Christmas season, feed orders increase.
  • In order to process all orders as planned, we take extensive precautions.
  • For example, we make special agreements to protect ourselves extensively against order peaks, bottlenecks and delivery failures.
  • The basis for this is good and close communication with all parties involved.

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