DLF's Global Market History

Livestock farmers depend on grass. It's their most basic raw material. But when the stock seed is poor, the grass is poor. That's what drove a group of Danish seed farmers to set up a cooperative to replace poor imported grass seed with their own higher quality Danish seed. Like all farmers, they wanted to be self-sufficient. After more than a century, our founding fathers' belief that 'good seeds ensure a good harvest' still dominates the way we think at DLF.

Denmark is a paradise for seed growers. As our DLF AmbA cooperative soon discovered, Danish soil and climate are ideal for growing grass seed – and Danish consumers were eager for  high quality Danish seed. By working with the Danish consumer cooperative, FDB, we distributed our seeds to every town and village in the land. We also invested wisely in multiplication know-how, seed processing, storage, and property. By the time of our 50th anniversary, we'd increased seed production twelve-fold.

In 1988 we acquired the Danish grass seed businesses called Dansk Frøhandel Trifolium Silo og SN-Frø. Our new company, DLF-TRIFOLIUM A/S, at last had the size and scale to turn a successful seed business into one that would give Danish grass growers exactly what they need. In the years that followed, we consolidated our position by acquiring several more local seed businesses and Danish Plantbreeding, one of the world's largest clover and grass seed plant research centers and the engine for plant breeding within Denmark. By drawing all aspects of the supply chain together – research, production, and sales – we created a Danish seed company that could compete efficiently in the international market.

In a hungry, sports-mad world, everyone wants better seeds for forage and for turf. To give European grass users the best of Danish seed, we embarked on a series of acquisitions and collaborations that took us into new markets in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the Czech Republic. We even set up an office in China.

We believe that all European grass users should be able to plant top quality seed. To give us new production facilities and new distribution channels within the EU and beyond, we acquired two Dutch companies, Cebeco Seeds Group and Advanta (merged into Innoseeds).

After so many acquisitions our challenge was to streamline the business and achieve efficiencies throughout the supply chain. So we set out to work as a single company under the DLF-TRIFOLIUM A/S banner. Along the way we improved everything, from research, seed production, distribution, sales, and marketing. We also strengthened our position in East and Central Europe, China, and New Zealand.

In 2013 we stepped into the North American market through the acquisition of DLF, a Canadian based seed company. It gave us access to production, research and development, and distribution channels in Canada and new opportunities the US. That same year, we achieved a rare honour. We became one of just 30 Danish companies named in the Danish Export Canon for their extraordinary contribution to export sales.

Focused Service and Customer Based Approach

To offer a more efficient experience to our customers we resructured the US business in 2022, forming DLF USA Inc.