Bimeda takes on challenge of innovation in animal stress and disease prevention
Mantra of “No suits, just boots” means understanding customer needs at every level of the business
Editor’s note: I had the opportunity to speak to Matt Harris, vice president of the US Commercial Division at Bimeda. Matt has worked with Bimeda for five years focusing on end-user awareness and overall expansion of their business, their US business through innovative and alternative solutions. He speaks about Bimeda now and where their focus is for the future.
Matt, tell us about Bimeda – it's history, what you're working on now and where you're headed.
Bimeda was founded in 1960 as a privately owned company, and we are still a privately owned company today. It was started as a regional business, but it's now expanded throughout the globe, operating in every major region across the world.
We have grown mainly through organic growth. However, over the last 25 years, we have made several strategic acquisitions that allow us to participate in different markets across the world. It was 25 years ago that we got our start here in the United States.
The US has become very important to our business as we produce all our products for the US market right here in North America with three of our facilities in the US and one in Canada. It's also important to be strategic in where we place our manufacturing plants to serve our US customers. This makes us more efficient and keeps us customer centric in how we deliver those products. We're better aligned with our distribution partners which allows us to deliver a better supply to the end user.

Let's talk more about your customers. Which segments of the industry are you working with?
About 85% of our business is with food-animal customers, and another 10% is with equine customers. So, we're a large animal business, and that’s where we see our growth and our ability to innovate. Currently, our focus and the vast majority of our business is in the US.
We have been very successful serving the US customer, and we feel like we understand the needs of this market. There's been a dramatic decline in US livestock innovation, and we have taken on that challenge – to be innovative in this space while others have chosen to go to other species.
What makes Bimeda unique?
There are several things that make Bimeda unique, but the one that rises to the top is our people. We have made strong efforts to hire people to be in front of our customers and to understand them better. We have somewhat of a slogan that we call, “No suits, just boots.”
We've hired real-world people that are in the livestock business themselves, so they understand what our customers’ needs are. That incudes not only our customer-facing team, but even those all the way up in the management of the company. Our management team also intimately understands this industry and knows what it takes to be a livestock producer in today's market.
Today, what is Bimeda working and building towards?
We provide roughly $100 million per year in savings to the livestock owner or the veterinarian. This is done through strategic alliances with our manufacturing locations and the strong distribution alliances we have. We plan to continue down this path – this is what we have thrived on and how we’ve been able to be successful.
As I mentioned earlier, the lack of innovation in the livestock space and the lack of funding in our industry have allowed us to execute more effectively there. And we have put more resources into R&D and other resources in order to get in front of our customers.
We have a strong focus on our customers' sustainability – what keeps them thriving. It’s important to us that we don't confuse what sustainability really is. It must be about our customers and prioritizing those ideas and innovations that keep them in business whether it’s farm families, veterinary clinics or in some cases, companies.
What's next for Bimeda and the industry?

While it might seem simple, we really see the opportunity for better more usable solutions around stress in animals and disease prevention.
Our eight R&D facilities across the world are working on ways through our own organic growth and strategic business acquisitions and innovations outside of our walls to produce products and processes that will help reduce stress and prevent disease in animals rather than trying to attack stress and disease from a clinical and treatment perspective.
We feel like it’s our duty to help the industry figure out how to lower stress levels and prevent disease at a better level than we've been able to do so far in our industry.