Giving second life to the 
Astronaut Milking Robot

The Lely Astronaut is an exceptionally durable milking system. It continues to demonstrate unprecedented quality, even after many years of reliable service. That is why we also offer reconditioned milking systems with the Lely Taurus label. In 2020 the first second hand Taurus-certified Lely Astronaut was installed at the farm of the Reinders family in the Netherlands.

A completely new world
Reinders opted for used robots because, compared to their old herringbone milking parlour of 1974, a milking robot was already a big step forward and it felt like a huge step to buy new ones. 'The insight in data about the cows and increased milk production, but also the extra spare time convinced us to make this decision. We feel that, with the arrival of the Lely Astronaut A4 Taurus milking robots, we have entered a completely new world', says the Reinders family. 'Normally we had to have dinner at 5 p.m. and then milk for another 3 hours. Nowadays, we sit and relax with our plates on our laps, watching our favourite football club, PSV. That makes our evenings suddenly very different and more enjoyable.'

Self service at Mallorca

At Mallorca, a Lely Astronaut A2 milking robot has been active for over ten years. Since this is the only customer at Mallorca and Lely hasn’t developed any other activities on the island, the farmer has been trained to carry out maintenance himself, supported by phone by our service engineers. Twice or three times a year a service engineer travels to Mallorca by boat to provide the right service to keep the robot running for the upcoming period. 

Smart feeding tour on- and offline

At the start of 2020 Lely traveled through Europe to provide information to customers about the optimal feeding strategy of cows. Feed management, the needs of different groups and the health of the animals.  We invited various experts and colleague dairy farmers to share learnings and experiences.

Switch to virtual tour
Unfortunately, this ‘Smart Feeding Tour’ ended abruptly, when COVID-19 entered Europe. But nothing could stop our feeding experts from sharing their stories and advice: Lely Atlantic started hosting a Smart Feeding Virtual Tour to replace the Smart Feeding event that should have happened in March. With 224 registrations, the online event turned out to be a worthy substitute.

First remote installation Astronaut A5 in China

In May 2020, Lely celebrated its first operational Astronaut A5 automatic milking system in China. A memorable event, not only as it’s the first installation for Lely since entering the Chinese market last year, but also because the startup was carried out remotely, due to COVID-19.

Our technical teams in China and the Netherlands came up with an innovative way to get the first robot operational. With the use of digital channels, the Chinese colleagues received training and guidance from the Dutch team in order to get the first robot up and running. A great success for everyone involved!

Lely expands business 
in Latin America

After the inauguration of a growing amount of farms, Lely expanded its operations in the Latin American market in 2020. Edison Acherman, Cluster Manager Latin America “There’s a huge market in Latin America for Lely. We are very excited to see that our technology is being adopted in the region and that automation is seen as the next step for dairy farming.”

Fun and exotic facts:

• The state of Santa Catarina, closed 2020 with 3 Lely Centers positioned from East to West, with a distance of 650 km between the Lely Center extremes.
• It is the state with the most Lely Astronaut robots sold in Brazil.

North America's 5,000th 
Lely Astronaut

In the autumn of 2020, Lely celebrated a key milestone in robotic milking with the installation of North America's 5,000th Lely Astronaut.

Chad Huyser, president of Lely North America: 'We work hard to bring our dairy industry forward into success. And now we are celebrating a key milestone: the delivery of the 5000^th robot in North America. We are excited to be part of the thousands of robots running around the world. The future of technology and automation is very bright and we’re excited to celebrate this milestone.'

Enjoy watching the team who worked on producing this Astronaut signing their names on this historic robot.

Fund-raising for fight 
against COVID-19

Alexander van der Lely and CEO André van Troost handed over a cheque to the Erasmus MC foundation. Erasmus MC is the leading hospital for Corona research and treatment in The Netherlands. Like all nurses and doctors in the world, the people who work in this medical center were (and still are) on the front lines of the Corona battle. In a short time, a fund-raising campaign within Lely resulted in a donation of €234,500 to the Erasmus Foundation for the fight against the pandemic.

First Dairy XL project

China’s first Dairy XL project started on a brand-new farm in Shi Jia Zhuang, Hebei province. Twelve Lely Astronaut A5 milking robots were installed, as well as two Lely Juno feed pushers and 12 Lely Luna cow brushes.

The farm is owned by Junlebao, the third biggest dairy processor in China.

Lely wins AGROS 2020 Expo Award

Lely won an AGROS 2020 Expo award for the Lely Discovery Collector in the category Best Product. The award was handed over at the AGROS Expo in Moscow, where Lely was present.

With more than 8000 visitors from 81 Russian regions, AGROS is Russia's leading trade fair for animal production and caters to all species in animal farming along every step of the value chain. The trade fair annually presents awards in several innovation categories.