USSEC kicked off its March 2019 marketing program in Northeast Europe with a two-day Swine Nutrition & Feed Manufacturing Technology Seminar in Warsaw, Poland. Polish Grain & Feed Chamber, an aggressive industry association and ally of U.S. Soy, helped to make the event a success.
Top local grain and feed and pig industry members listened to four distinguished speakers representing mature livestock and feed markets of the Netherlands and Spain. While Dr. Jannes Doppenberg and Gert Hemke, both of Schothorst Feed Research, a private research and consulting institute based in Lelystad, Netherlands, covered major pig nutrition topics, and Juan Acedo-Rico of Acedo & Associate, Madrid, Spain, spoke on various feed manufacturing issues.
Dr. Doppenberg opened the seminar, speaking about nutrition and weaning piglets without antibiotics and pharmaceutical levels of zinc oxide. Mr. Hemke focused on the optimal feeding of highly productive pigs, including sows, which led to his explanation of feeding management.
Dr. Doppenberg provided a description of the nutritional and economic value of U.S. Hi-Pro soybean meal in livestock feed, using the example of least cost formulation of pig diets.
Mr. Acedo-Rico spoke about pelleting, the process that accounts for 50 to 60 percent of a feed mill’s energy bill, but the first expert concentrated on the post-pelleting application of oils and liquid additives and the second expert on how the process influences protein denaturation and physical pellet quality.
The audience had also a chance to look deeper into the optimization of other key technological processes, namely conditioning and extrusion as applied to grains and oilseeds and soybeans as well as other oilseeds.
Mr. Acedo-Rico’s experience in design and construction of new feed mills led to his sharing with industry members what should be considered for a challenging project. The knowledge shared was very important to the Polish audience because new feed mills are still being built there.