“By using advanced technologies such as nutrigenomics, China can rapidly transform itself to become the world’s most significant and most advanced player in the global feed industry,” said Connolly. “Four of the world’s largest feed companies are Chinese. With an expected output of 190 million tons this year, China is the world’s largest feed producer.”
During his presentation, Connolly discussed other cutting-edge technologies and summarized Alltech’s vision for the future of the Chinese feed industry in four points:
1. Consolidation – Between 1990 and 2012, the number of feed mills in both Europe and the U.S. dropped by a third, while their production capacity increased over 80% from an average of 24,000 to 50,000 tonnes per year. A similar trend is forecast to take place in China in the next five to 10 years. Already, the number of feed mills has dropped from 13,000 to just over 10,000 and is predicted to drop even further as overall feed tonnage rises.
2. Automation –The feed mills of the future will be fully automated systems. Three people can run a 100,000 tonne capacity feed mill in the West, where the same mill in China will have 30-40 production workers. Automation not only reduces cost but also increases manufacturing accuracy and plays a role in biosecurity.
3. Consumer Demands – Today’s Chinese consumers are increasingly conscious about food quality and food safety. Safe feed is essential to produce safe food, thus feed producers must use safe and natural technologies in their production to ensure full traceability, consistent quality and biosecurity. At the same time, feed producers will need to significantly increase their feed efficiency.
4. Precision Nutrition – In the future, feed producers will be able to access information from technologies such as nutrigenomics, near infra-red, temperature probes and automatic weighing scales. These and other real-time information systems will identify, on a minute-by-minute basis, the effect that nutrition is having at a genetic level, in relation to animal growth, diseases, food safety and food quality. This will lead to ‘precision nutrition’ or the development of systems that deliver precise nutrients when animals require them.
“In order to become highly competitive in global markets as well as to live up to the growing expectations of Chinese consumers, it will be critical for Chinese producers to maximize the use of new technologies, including novel materials such as algae or enzymes to assist digestion. Technologies targeting enhanced feed efficiency should be embraced, including those developed using nutrigenomics,” Connolly said.
Dr. Cai Huiyi, president of the China Feed Economy Professional Committee, said that “our aim with the conference was to learn and we learned a lot from the history of the feed industry in the U.S. and Europe, which is essential for China to accelerate the development of its own feed successes.”
