Ross 140 Club launched in Finland

The Ross® 140 Club, established by Aviagen® SweChick Ab in 2012, recently welcomed its first members in Finland. A special awards event was organized in conjunction with Ross customer DanHatch Finland to celebrate the achievements of five hatching egg producers, who reached or exceeded the Club’s target of 140 chicks or more.
The best farm recorded an excellent result of 152.1 chicks per hen housed. Elina Kari, technical advisor, DanHatch Finland, used the meeting to extend her thanks to the egg producers and parent stock rearing farms: “Although the size of the laying farms have increased, you have succeeded to get very good results. It is now vital that we continue to pay attention to good management practice. We also hope to use our network of companies to exchange advice and information and may even get some good tips for the future from our Danish sister company and share our experiences with them.”
Hannu Tiuttu, technical and sales manager of Aviagen SweChick Ab, added: “The Ross 140 Club was created to acknowledge and reward our customers’ producers who achieve excellent results which impact on the economic performance of their businesses. It has been a successful initiative with our customers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland and we are delighted that it has now been rolled out to the Finnish market. It has been a great pleasure for us to see the winners’ outstanding stockmanship reflected in these results and we look forward to more award recipients joining the Ross 140 Club.”
The Finnish market has undergone some changes in the past few months. DanHatch Finland recently acquired the hatchery business and related real estate assets from meat company HKScan Finland Oy, including two hatcheries in Kokemäki and Mynämäki. “Our aim is to create favorable surroundings for day old broiler chick production in terms of quality and quantity. DanHatch Finland will concentrate on day-old chick production under its own management but in close cooperation with HKScan Finland. This new structure will add competence and efficiency to this very valuable part of the production process,” said animal sourcing director Veli-Matti Jäppilä, HKScan Group. He added: “We are also planning to make major changes for the slaughter and for the time being the selection of a new production site is under consideration.” 
Last year HKScan Finland decided to move from Ross 508 to Ross 308 and, due to the continuous development of the Ross 308 and the product’s suitability for the needs of the industry, results until now are promising as reflected in the achievements of the Ross 140 Club members.