Singapore Grain Trading Houses and Importers Attend USSEC Workshop on Animal Nutrition, Feed Ingredient Quality and Cost Management

Every year, USSEC conducts a half-day workshop for non-technically trained agribusiness professionals largely coming from the major grain trading houses and importers based in Singapore. The objective of this event is to help bridge some of the knowledge and information gap that invariably exists between suppliers, purchasers, and end-users. The topics chosen for this workshop will help traders and purchasers better appreciate what is important to end-users and how the latter values the feed ingredients they buy. For example, while sellers may price and purchasers may buy soybean meal against crude protein content, the workshop explains that to the buyers’ nutritionist what matters is the density of its amino acid profile, metabolizable energy contribution, and consistency.
25 participants from Annona Pte Ltd, Bunge Agribusiness Singapore, Cargill International Trading Pte Ltd, CHS Singapore Trading Company Pte Ltd, CJ International Asia Pte Ltd, CME Group, Glencore Agriculture Pte Ltd, Louis Dreyfus Company Asia, Marubeni Grain & Oilseeds Trading Asia Pte Ltd, Scoular Asia, Sojitz Asia Pte Ltd, and Wilmar Trading took part in this year’s workshop.
Professor Julian Wiseman, University of Nottingham, UK, gave a presentation on “Understanding Nutrient Values in Feed Ingredients.” “U.S. Soybean Meal: Looking Beyond Crude Protein for Profit” was presented by Dr. Basilisa Reas, USSEC Technical Consultant – Philippines. Dr. Reas’ presentation made the case that suppliers could potentially improve their profit margins by differentiating and marketing soybean meal against its intrinsic characteristics instead of a single crude protein measure. In another presentation, “Understanding Ingredient Purchasing and Planning from Buyers’ Perspective,” Matthew Clark, Managing Director, FeedGuys Resources, provided the audience with a good appreciation of the considerations that commercial nutritionists make in formulating and processing feed. USSEC Regional Director – Southeast Asia Timothy Lohgave a regional overview and explained the U.S. Soy Sustainability Protocol (SSAP) and Sustainable U.S. Soy program.

Clockwise: Prof Julian Wiseman, University of Nottingham, UK; Timothy Loh, USSEC RD – SEA, Matthew Clark, MD, FeedGuys, Singapore; Dr. Basilisa Reas, Technical Consultant, USSEC Philippines

WORKSHOP EVALUATION RESULTS