soybean field

USSEC Touts Importance of Amino Acids as Value-Determining Factor of SBM during Korean Feed Mill Visits

USSEC recently visited three Korean feed mills as it endeavors to stress the importance of linking amino acids to the price of soybean meal (SBM).  The feed mills visited were Sunjin Co., Ltd., a swine integrator; Easy Bio Co., Ltd., a broiler integrator; and Cargill Agri Purina Co., Ltd.  Staff from these mills traveled to the U.S. last October to meet with USSEC’s U.S. SBM buyers’ team.  Easy Bio and Cargill Agri Purina are currently using 17,000 MT and 15,000 MT, respectively, of U.S. SBM.

While the technical staff members of the Korean feed and livestock industry already generally accept the concept that digestible amino acid is more valuable than crude protein, purchasing staff still tend to stick to crude protein-dependent purchasing decisions on SBM.  USSEC technical director Kim Nill discussed with R&D, Q/C and formulation staff of the three feed mills how to change the criteria that purchasing staff use for evaluating SBM.  Based on these discussions, USSEC plans to host a roundtable to educate purchasing staff about determining amino acids as the value-determining factor of SBM.  USSEC’s published SBM whitepaper and the Korean Feed Association’s analysis result on imported SBMs were shared with the feed mills to differentiate U.S. SBM.   Both reports indicate that U.S. SBM provides more amino acids than South American SBM.