What it does: LIC is an agritech and herd improvement co-operative which empowers livestock farmers through the delivery of superior genetics and technology.
Mission: Drive value, innovate and deliver a positive impact for our customers and shareholders by Focusing on helping our farmers optimize value from their livestock by enabling them to produce the most sustainable and efficient animals and the highest value product.
Size and presence: Headquartered at Newstead, Hamilton, we’ve got more than 800 staff based around New Zealand with offices also located in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia.
Best known for: This commitment to research and development (R&D) and new product development continues today with LIC’s strategy to deliver innovation-led growth, with an ongoing focus on the core New Zealand dairy industry.
The good bits: Good pay, good people. Great working environment.
The not-so-good bits: Redundancy. Too many meetings about minor things.
We've been improving the lives of our farmers for more than 100 years. Innovation and cooperation are at the heart of what we do.
Our roots in the New Zealand dairy industry run deep - back to 1909 when cows were first tested for butterfat yield under a self-sample herd testing system. Group Herd Testing then had its origins in Waikato during the 1920s, with official testing officers making visits on-farm.
In the 1950’s we developed our artificial breeding (AB) program at Newstead in Hamilton, which gave farmers the ability to choose superior genetics for their dairy herd.
Next came our Sire Proving Scheme (SPS), introduced in 1961, which was a major milestone that improved the artificial breeding (AB) service we had already started.
The scheme allowed farmers to use nothing but unproven semen across their herds, to optimize genetic gain. To this day, the SPS is still one of the most important factors in providing genetic gains for our farmers, playing a key role in improving the national dairy herd.
With the national dairy herd growing, a new database was introduced in 1985. This platform, named MINDA, gave farmers the ability to verify ancestry and parentage for current and future herd members, while also keeping track of their mating and calving. MINDA has evolved substantially over the years, providing more value to farmers with MINDA LIVE and MINDA apps being launched in 2016 and 2015 respectively.
LIC, as we know it today, was officially formed in 1988 - as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NZ Dairy Board after the six LIC associations wound up. Most recently, a share simplification process was undertaken in 2018 to protect the cooperative principles that are fundamental to LIC.
Drive value, innovate and deliver a positive impact for our customers and shareholders by Focusing on helping our farmers optimize value from their livestock by enabling them to produce the most sustainable and efficient animals and the highest value product.
We will be guided by our primary focus of delivering value for our farmer shareholders.
We believe in constant improvement, never settling, and always striving for greatness. We know little improvements can add up to huge gains for our customers, and our country.
So we constantly ask ourselves those "what if" questions, finding smarter ways of doing things, and hiring driven people who don't want to accept the status quo. At LIC, you'll find everything you need and the support of like-minded people so you can add valuable contributions to our customers and the New Zealand economy.
It's a competitive world out there and we like to think we're leading the charge not just in technology and service but also in the way we look after our people. We think these benefits are pretty up there, but we're still working on improvements!
LIC’s future, and that of our farmers, is reliant on a healthy, resilient environment. We live and play in our communities and want to see clean, safe, and healthy spaces. Our farms need clean water for animals and quality milk production, healthy paddocks to grow quality grass, efficient animals, and good animal husbandry practices. We’re committed to protecting our environment and delivering products and services that can enable our farmers to do the same.
One of the primary ways we help assist our farmers to reduce their environmental footprint is by breeding high genetic merit bulls for artificial breeding, supporting farmers to accelerate their herd's genetic gain.
High BW (Breeding Worth) animals are more environmentally efficient than lower genetic merit animals as they partition more of their feed eaten into milk solids production, and less into waste. This means more nitrogen is being converted into protein in cow’s milk rather than being excreted as urine or feces.
We have defined the following science-based climate change targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels:
*Excluding biogenic methane
To help us reach our targets we’re transitioning our company cars to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) such as the Mitsubishi Outlander.