Hey!
This week’s blog is written by Sebastian. I wrote my previous blog post in the fall when I was placed at AS-Faktor working in business development, but a lot has happened since then.
After Stockholm, I went to Unibake in Copenhagen where I worked on a project for their fast foods division. I looked at the northern European market for hamburger and hot dog buns to find out what opportunities Unibake have to expand in the segment. Did you all know that Lantmännen Unibake is the market leader for fast food buns in Sweden with Korvbrödsbagarn (read: MAX Friscobröd) and has a big presence in Norway, Finland, and Denmark? I keep thinking that it would be amazing if you could find our delicious buns all over the world though. Well, maybe one day…
Now I am at Lantmännen’s energy division, which just expanded by acquiring a British company’s factory outside of Norrköping. We are famous for our imagination here at Lantmännen (not really), so we decided to call the new company “Lantmännen Oats”, as the factory refines oats. The energy division also consist of “Lantmännen Agroetanol” (ethanol), “Lantmännen Aspen” (alkylate fuel), and “Lantmännen Reppe” (gluten, starch, and drinking alcohol).
Instead of joining one of these companies, I was fortunate enough to work with the energy division’s management team in Stockholm. I am “uppe i smöret” (“up in the butter”), so to speak. On a daily basis, I am helping out where needed, but I am mostly working on a market analysis for starches and the integration of Lantmännen Oats into Lantmännen. I also get to sit in on a bunch of meetings to really understand what happens in a management team, which is really cool.
Here we are in beautiful Skåne
However, this post was supposed to be about the training we just had about change management, and not about me. The topic of change is both incredibly relevant and interesting. We got to learn about useful theories on change management, and lead change through simulations and real life scenarios. A lot of the issues we came across were very relatable, as they are issues we all continuously face in our projects. Change is truly a part of everyday life, at least here at Lantmännen, so learning how to deal with it will probably have some pretty fantastic consequences.
We took some time to work out during the training. Here, Johanna is trying to kill us with a cross fit workout.
Learning about change was great, but it wasn’t even nearly as good as meeting up with the whole trainee-gang at a vineyard in sunny Skåne. Summer finally arrived! We always have a great time meeting up, and even if we learned that there perhaps is a reason to why Sweden isn’t famous for wine, the beautiful scenery along with the company made these three days absolutely amazing.
Until next time!
/Sebastian