The first news I found here at Expo came from our sponsor, GEA Farm Technologies. I know we’ve been promoting WestfaliaSurge but the company is re-launching their brand and this post and interviews will help explain it. Basically, WestfaliaSurge is now a part of the new GEA Farm Technologies.

The CEO and President of GEA Farm Technologies is Vern Foster. He gave us a comprehensive presentation this morning (media and dealers) to explain the reasons behind the change and what that means for the company and its customers.

He says, “It’s to pull all of the organizations that are part of GEA Farm Technologies, Houle, Norbco, WestfaliaSurge, pull it under a common brand so it makes sense for the marketplace, makes sense for our investors, makes sense for our customers and our dealer distribution.” The GEA stands for Global Engineering Alliance, a 5.3 billion Euro company that operates in 50 countries. Vern says, “It helps us really re-focus under one umbrella as we continue to grow and create additional organizations and innovate into the field of agriculture.”

Since Houle, Norbco and WestfaliaSurge have separate sales forces he says they’ve been in discussion together to “offer a more total solutions package to a producer.”

He says you’ll start seeing the new GEA Farm Technologies brand at trade show and in their advertising. In fact, his business cards already show the new logo!

You can listen to Vern’s full presentation here: [audio:http://zimmcomm.biz/wdexpo/wdx-08-foster-presentation.mp3]

You can also download the full presentation using this link (mp3 file).

You can also listen to an interview I did with Vern afterward as part of our Milking Parlor Podcast: [audio:http://zimmcomm.biz/wdd/milking-parlor-30.mp3]

To subscribe to the Milking Parlor podcast, here are some instructions.

World Dairy Expo 2008 Photo Album

Sponsors of World Dairy Diary coverage of this year’s World Dairy Expo include GEA Farm Technologies and BASF Plant Science.