Now that ground has broken on a $50 million-plus expansion and modernization project, Lindsay Corp. is building on its legacy as a Nebraska-bred global manufacturer and distributor of infrastructure equipment and technology.
The addition of a new 40,000-square-foot structure at the company’s largest global manufacturing facility, located in Lindsay, Nebraska, will give the business a smart plant for the next generation of irrigation and road safety products and systems. The project, which represents the single largest investment in Lindsay’s history, is slated to be complete by the end of 2025.
In a press release, Rich Harold, senior vice president, global operations of Lindsay, commented, “We are designing and implementing the factory of the future.”
The project will provide industry technologies including data connectivity, analytics, and artificial intelligence, along with automation and robotics. The new facility will house technology in galvanizing, a core process for manufacturing pivot irrigation systems and road safety products.
“This investment will accelerate Lindsay’s ability to bring its latest innovations, including the Smart Pivot, to market, and it aligns with our strategic growth plan and commitment to leveraging state-of-the-art technology across our global operations,” President and CEO Randy Wood stated in a press release.
In an exclusive interview with the Midlands Business Journal, Wood described the leading-edge technology behind one of Lindsay’s signature new brands.
“The Smart Pivot is a new technology platform that really changes the way our customers interact with their equipment,” Wood said, adding that it introduced a diagnostic capability that doesn’t currently exist in the field. “We’re taking a sensor technology and applying it over the top of the mechanical structure to create the Smart Pivot.
“So now customers will get notifications saying, for example, there’s an issue on tower No. 4 that you or your dealer have to take care of. From a customer value perspective, it gives better visibility to the operation and monitoring of the machine, and much less downtime. So that when there are issues with a machine we’re able to diagnosis it, repair it and get it back in service much quicker.”
The Smart Pivot builds on Lindsay’s FieldNet remote irrigation management platform.
Innovation in the Heartland
In agriculture, time is money, and any advances that improve efficiency and yield become cost savers that can help make operations more profitable.
Innovation is at the heart of the pivot irrigation industry. Along with Valmont Industries and Reinke Manufacturing Co., Lindsay is among a trio of Nebraska companies that own large shares of the pivot irrigation market both in the U.S. and abroad. Innovations by each company helped create the mechanized irrigation industry in the 1940s and ’50s.
“Mechanized irrigation was pioneered, started, invented here,” Wood said. “Our company’s founders, the Zimmerer family, were certainly early contributors.”
Continued innovation has allowed Lindsay and its peer Nebraska companies to remain competitive in a space dedicated to supporting the needs of farmers-producers in feeding the world.
“When you look at the numbers, irrigated agriculture represents 20% of the area of global acres that produce 40% of the food,” Wood said. “We know that irrigation is going to play a critically important role in growing enough food to feed a growing population. Between now and 2050 we’ve got to increase food production by 70%. Some of that is improvement in diets in the middle class in some parts of the world. Some of it is population growth. But we know irrigation’s going to play an important role in feeding a growing population and providing fuel and energy for that growing population.”
Greater efficiencies are vital for a manufacturer such as Lindsay to remain relevant and responsive to changing conditions.
Lindsay’s new facility, Wood said, will house two metal forming activities.
“It’s going to give us better material flow. It’s going to be filled with all new tube manufacturing equipment with state-of-the-art technologies to enable sound and safe material flow,” he said. “There will be connections from this building into the next adjacent manufacturing operation and that’s a big part of the efficiency game. We’re putting production closer to the second stage of the irrigation system manufacturing process.”
A covered roof in the galvanizing facility is also part of the new construction project.
The various additions and improvements are about bringing all Lindsay assets into the 21st century.
“When you’ve been in a facility as long as we have in Lindsay, Nebraska, you’re spending capital every year replacing tired assets, implementing more efficient assets, making the factory safer. So capital investment for us is ongoing and kind of an annual process for us,” Wood said. “This particular investment was easily months in the making. It involved a lot of discussion with our board of directors and strategic suppliers and partners back and forth.
“It was always about the long-term future of the company and the industries we serve. These types of investments aren’t generally justified by looking in the rear-view mirror. They’re justified by looking out the windshield toward the future of what you want your company to be, where you see the opportunities.”
The decision to reinvest in Lindsay’s first and oldest facility in the world came down to positioning the company for the future.
“These types of investments are big and have multi-year payback windows,” Wood said. “But they’re ones that we think transform the way our company looks, the way our company operates, and the capabilities we have to bring new technologies to market quicker, react to the cyclical and seasonal nature of our business, and keep our employees productive and safe.”
Lindsay’s Legacy
Lindsay has come a long way from a modest start in 1955 when Platte County farmer Paul Zimmerer invented the Zimmatic Pivot Irrigation System. He and his sons Art and Bernie founded Lindsay Manufacturing Co., which became Lindsay Corp. The company now serves customers worldwide, with major facilities in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Cape Town, South Africa and Campinas, Brazil, but it still retains a strong Midwest base between its Lindsay, Nebraska, factory and its Omaha headquarters.
Lindsay moved its corporate headquarters to Omaha in 2000, Wood said, “to give us better access to global talent and a better footprint from which to grow.” In 2019 Lindsay moved to its current building at 18135 Burke St.
The company has some 1,300 employees worldwide, including hundreds each in Omaha and in Lindsay.
Wood sees the expansion and modernization as the latest chapter in Lindsay’s legacy story — a story he puts great stock in.
“I think you can’t help but be proud of a company that started with such humble beginnings. A father and his two sons looking to solve a problem for their neighbors. And that company grew to become a powerhouse across the U.S. and has now grown to become a true global company with operations around the world. And those initial problems they solved in Platte County are now solving problems for customers around the world.”
From then till now, Wood said, innovation has driven growth.
“When you look at what innovation used to mean for our industry it was really focused on the mechanical elements of the machines,” he said. “How do we irrigate the corners, how do we have longer spans for better cost of implementation, how do we be more efficient with sprinkler design and application.”
Wood said the key innovation that the Zimmerer family came up with was “electric drives that allowed mechanized pivots to be used on steep inclines.”
“Some of the earlier mechanized machines were water-driven machines, which meant they could really only operate on flat ground,” he added. “Well, our founders put electricity to the units. Their first units were known as ‘hill climbers’ because they had the ability to climb the pretty hilly country around Lindsay. It was no accident they started there with machines with the capacity and capability to climb those hills.”
Wood said innovation has shifted in the last 20 years to digital tools that conserve energy, use less water and maximize yield outputs. Tools that give farmers an advantage over their competitors will pique their interest.
“Research and development into new tech is where we see more of our investments, more of our people, more of our time and energy,” he said. “It’s now going into those digital innovations that allow our customers to be more efficient in the utilization of resources and higher outputs. We’ve tripled spending in technology-related R&D and tripled the number of patents and intellectual properties. It’s an area with more resources focused there because this is the path to winning in the future in our industry. It’s also connected to our growth strategy, particularly in M&A (mergers and acquisitions).”
Strategic Investments
In 2023 Lindsay acquired Norfolk, Nebraska-based FieldWise and earlier this year it acquired a 49.9% minority interest in Pessl Instruments of Austria to strengthen its high-tech solutions for growers. These are the latest in a long series of acquisitions and mergers both domestically and abroad that have helped give Lindsay a national and international footprint.
“So it’s not only what we spend internally in engineering and software development, it’s also about how we make larger investments and acquisitions to make sure we have the best people, the best technology, the best platforms because again that’s the battleground for us and that’s where we have to win in the future,” Wood said. “We invest strategically. It’s not about just adding more people and more mass. Not every problem you have can be solved with more people.”
Culture is where it begins and ends for Wood when it comes to talent management.
“Sometimes talent management is about keeping the really good people you have and not losing them to other opportunities,” he said. “We’ve been able to do a very good job of that by building a culture people want to be a part of and contribute to.”
Any new venture must meet a simple value proposition in Wood’s eyes.
“If we look at inventing new technologies, innovating in our platforms and product lines, the first questions we have to ask are, does this create value somewhere for our customer? Does it make their life easier? Does it reduce their risk? Does it allow them to reduce their cost and to be more profitable? These questions of value creation through a customer’s eyes have to be the first questions you answer when you start to work on new technologies or innovation.
“Agriculture is like any business. If your business is profitable you’re going to invest more in growth and innovation. If your business is weakening customers get a little tighter and averse to making large investments. This is a cyclical business. There’s an ebb and a flow. As a public company we’ve got to find the pockets of growth where they exist, continue to invest and support those and our long-term growth strategies, including technology and innovation, regardless of where you are in the cycle.”
Thus, Lindsay has offset declining ag market revenues in North America with increased revenues in South America, particularly Brazil.
From Wood’s perspective, there’s no time to rest on laurels or to take things for granted.
“It’s important for a company like ours not to become too complacent,” he said. “I like our global footprints. When we talk to investors in our company we say we have a commercial presence and an operational presence in any part of the world where there could be or will be center pivot demand. Omaha, Rotterdam, Cape Town, Campinas – we have the ability to launch from those sites into other parts of the world.
Wood gave the example of the company’s investment in a facility in Turkey because of growth potential in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Northern Africa.
As long as Wood is at the helm, he said, “We always want to be looking forward.” The company’s revenue performance and projected earnings place it in a good spot.
“We’re very blessed from a financial strength perspective,” he said. “We’ve got a strong balance sheet and the ability to invest where we see the opportunities for growth. Entering a new market can be energizing. When you look at the impact a company can have on agriculture in a region when we enter there it’s pretty rewarding.”
Wood tries never to lose sight of the evolution that Lindsay has made. The changes that have happened in its nearly 70-year journey from that small family startup until now were recently brought home to him.
“We’re blessed with a lot of people that have been with the company a long time. At our groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility one of the persons who held a shovel was a 52-year Lindsay employee,” he said. “He’s still in our shipping department.
“I think about guys like that and what they’ve seen over the years. I think our founders would be incredibly proud of what we’ve done, and not because we’re bigger and make more money and employ more people, but because Lindsay irrigation systems have helped increase food production for a growing population and have helped save water and energy through technology that promotes conservation and efficient utilization of resources. That’s what drives us every day.”
18135 Burke St., Suite 100, Omaha, Nebraska 68022
Phone: 402-829-6800
Website: www.lindsay.com
Social Media: LinkedIn
