House of Raeford Farms celebrated the grand opening of its new, state-of-the-art chicken hatchery with a ribbon cutting ceremony today. The new 63,000-square-foot facility features advanced technology designed for optimum production efficiency, and is fully automated to allow for the highest levels of biosecurity, quality control and operational analytics. This level of control produces a very tight hatch window, and provides assurance of consistently healthy chicks.

 “It has been a pleasure to partner with NatureForm and Pas Reform to bring this new hatchery to life. After seeing firsthand the quality and consistency of the new chicks produced using this new technology, we had no doubt that this was the best route to innovating incubation for our company,” said Bob Johnson, House of Raeford president and CEO. “House of Raeford Farms is deeply committed to our communities, to our growers and to producing the highest quality products. Quality starts with healthy chicks. This advanced operation provides yet another layer of quality assurance.” Temperature, static pressure, and humidity are centrally controlled throughout the building to keep eggs and embryos in perfect condition. 

“This collaboration with House of Raeford is a perfect example on how to jointly execute a state of-the-art hatchery with all the latest that a hatchery can hold in terms of single stage incubation, advanced climate control and hatchery automation,” said Bouke Hamminga, director of sales and business development for Pas Reform Hatchery Technologies. “We are proud of the final product, a one-of-a-kind U.S. hatchery, created as a result of this collaborative new venture.”

House of Raeford currently works with more than 85 contract growers to produce more than 40 million chickens each year. The new facility, set to officially open June 22, is expected to produce more than one million birds per week.“We greatly appreciate House of Raeford’s $16 million investment to construct and operate one of the most technologically advanced hatcheries in North America right here in Aiken County,” said Will Williams, president and CEO of the Economic Development Partnership in Aiken, Edgefield and Saluda counties. “This investment will provide the county with more than $200,000 in new property tax revenue the first year of operation, and nearly $3 million in revenue for Aiken County over a 20-year period.”

Pas Reform Hatchery Technologies - press release - April 30, 2015

Kuzbasskiy Broiler Group, part of Volcov A.P., has achieved remarkable growth in less than five years, to expand from small-scale production to become a modern meat processing company with more than treble its original output. The company meets all European security and quality requirements, setting a prime example of smart investment not only in its own business, but also for modern agribusiness development in the Kemerovo region. Both the company’s Novosafonovskaya and Plotnikovskaya poultry farms are modern, well-equipped facilities that have created employment for more than 1000 people.

Owner Anatoly Volcov says such outstanding results have been made possible by adopting innovative, future-focused technologies such as Pas Reform’s market-leading Smart incubation system, observing strict standards of hygiene and biosecurity and the work of well-trained personnel. “Quality is our best card,” he says, “The trademark “Kuzbasskiy broiler” is well-known and liked by customers and has delivered steady growth since we launched our own retail operations in 2010. “Our retail channel is now being further expanded, with the launch of our first franchised operations in Novosibirsk city, in January of this year.”

Last year, Novosafonovskaya poultry farm expanded its hatchery operations by 10 million eggs per year, completing the third phase of Kuzbasskiy’s plans to meet the growing market demand. The company’s collaboration with Pas Reform began in 2008, with the purchase, installation and commissioning of Smart single-stage equipment, climate control and hatchery automation systems to produce the first 9mln. hatching eggs per  year. In subsequent years, phase two expansion added a further 11 mln eggs capacity and in its third and final phase, 10 mln. additional hatching egg capacity has been created. Mr. Volcov concludes: “Pas Reform has proved to be an excellent partner for the realization of our plans.

“Smart hatchery planning by the project team from the very beginning has built-in the capacity for all three phases of our expansion, without the need for further significant investments into the hatchery buildings.”

VIV Asia 2015 has been very successful for many of the Dutch Poultry Centre Preferred Partners. The visitors represented every segment of animal protein production and processing. According to the organiser's post show press release, the event demonstrated conclusively that it has become unrivalled as the reference point for people from throughout the region to meet in order to develop their business knowledge and contacts.

Must-attend event

“VIV Asia 2015 has exceeded our expectations,” exclaims show manager Ruwan Berculo. “We wanted it to be a show that was relevant to everyone in Asia and also to the milk, aquaculture, meat and egg businesses as well as its established theme of feed to meat. This was most definitely achieved, and at the same time the show has been bigger again. “We thought that the industry would do well to have about the same number of visitors as in 2013, but in fact we welcomed more than 38,000 people during the three days of the fair. To see the attendance rising by more than 15% has been extraordinary. “The key point in my opinion is that VIV Asia is now definitely established as the essential meeting place for people from throughout Asia who are seriously involved in producing and processing animal proteins. Everyone in the business realises they must attend because they know that their competitors and colleagues will be here. They also recognise that it is the place to come in order to be well informed about techniques and markets as well as about innovations and international suppliers.”

Poultry and eggs

Poultry’s importance in the VIV Asia profile has been underlined again in 2015, with the major growth in Asian attendance originating from countries that have a strong interest in producing chickens and eggs. For the egg industry, it was further enhanced by the decision of the International Egg Commission to hold its Asian leadership forum in Bangkok immediately before the show. Where the two-day forum had been expected to attract about 35 participants, in fact 110 industry leaders were present --- and the intention now is to repeat the IEC event alongside VIV Asia again in 2017. Berculo gives credit, too, to the role played by various partner organisations in helping to arrange special events for each of the animal protein segments. The poultry segment partners were Poultry International from Watt Global Media with the Dutch Poultry Centre and the Netherlands government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. 

High ratings

“From our point of view as the show’s organisers,” Ruwan adds, “the most gratifying part of all has been that our exhibitors and visitors liked VIV Asia 2015. During the show we asked people to rate their experience of it on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher meaning better. For the exhibitors the average rating was 8.0, which is a very good result. But the visitors rated this year’s VIV Asia even more highly, they gave it a score of 8.5. “Their vote is especially appreciated, given the fact that accommodating the increased number of exhibitors on the BITEC showground in Bangkok had been quite challenging for us. The stands for the show were spread over several halls, including a temporary one, and on two levels. I can promise that here will be a much easier layout on the completely redeveloped showground by the time VIV Asia returns there in March 2017.”

The Netherlands  - Official Partner Country

For VIV Asia 2015 the “Official Partner Country-initiative” was introduced. The Netherlands were the first in what hopefully becomes an impressive range of partner countries over the coming editions. Two Dutch pavilions, a Dutch Innovation seminar and several networking events resulted in a significant boost of trade relations between Asian and Dutch animal protein professionals. The Dutch Innovation Seminar was supported by the Dutch Poultry Centre, branch organization with almost 90 member companies representing the Dutch poultry industry. The Major of the City of Rotterdam, Mr Ahmed Aboutaleb, opened the seminar and made a guided tour on the exhibition floor where he visited a number of Dutch exhibitors.

Facts and figures

This 12th edition of VIV Asia had 874 exhibitors compared with 770 at the previous event in 2013. The companies present this year included 178 who were exhibiting for the first time. Visitor numbers over the three days of the March 2015 show reached 38,425, representing an increase of 15.6% from the 33,229 visiting in 2013. From registration details about visitors’ region of origin, double-digit percentage increases were recorded for the number of people visiting from Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America and Western Europe. Foreign visitors from outside the show’s home country of Thailand rose by 18.2% to 25,302. In total, this year’s show in Bangkok was visited by people from 124 countries. Thailand itself was among 15 Asian nations sending more visitors to VIV Asia in 2015, with the region’s largest increases coming from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China. 

Click here for the VIV Asia 2015 Digital Review, pictures, videos and presentations.