Pas Reform hosts meeting in the Netherlands

Members of hatcheries and breeding companies from Belgium and the Netherlands recently held a general meeting. Pas Reform hosted the event at its global distribution center in Doetinchem, the Netherlands. Attendees represented more than 50 companies and included delegates from Aviagen, Cobb, Hubbard, Lohmann and Hendrix Genetics.
Following the meeting, Pas Reform’s CEO Harm Langen outlined Pas Reform’s recently launched SmartGrowth program, which will support customers around the world with smart, integrated, sustainable hatchery solutions.
Bouke Hamminga, Pas Reform’s international sales and business development director, closed the afternoon with a detailed perspective on “the sustainable hatchery,” as needing a complete range of solutions, not only to address environmental concerns, but also to provide robust governance for food safety and public health, animal health and welfare, as well as innovation in new technologies to drive greater efficiency and process control.
“The need for close, cooperative links between breeding companies and hatcheries has never been greater,” concluded Langen. “This is where quality begins and where standards are set that have implications throughout the poultry value chain, as it scales up to meet substantial increases in demand in the coming years.”

Pas Reform offers advice about managing chick production

In large-scale hatchery operations today, a single hatchery manager is rarely responsible for managing every aspect of chick production or for the maintenance of incubators. He or she no longer relies solely on their own experience and intuitive observations to achieve good quality chicks. In some cases, an incubationist has taken over more routine tasks, including fine-tuning incubation programs and performing egg analyses to solve incubation problems.
The hatchery manager is now responsible for overall hatchery organization, coordinating different teams to work on specific tasks, such as setting eggs or pulling chicks and writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the different tasks assigned to each team.
He or she must evaluate the output and quality of individual teams and of the combined results that they achieve together. Finally, whether at hatchery level or for a larger poultry integration, it is the manager’s role to report on all outputs to the company’s management team.
Many modern hatcheries are now organized on an industrial scale, requiring tools such as SOPs and Critical Control Points (CCP) in hazard analysis, combined with management tools like Key Performance Indicators (KPI), to manage such complex production businesses effectively.
SOPs should at least be available for the most critical steps in the production of good quality chicks, including:

1. quality control for eggs received
2. egg disinfection
3. egg setting and incubation programs
4. egg transfer
5. loading the hatchers and hatch programs
6. chick pulling and quality control
7. vaccination
8. chick transport

Critical Control Points are traditionally related to hazard analysis in food safety programs. However today, we increasingly see CCPs related not only to the production of food free of harmful contaminations (bacteria, fungi, etc.), but also to other quality-relevant factors.
In the hatchery, CCPs include temperature and RH in egg storage, for example, to prevent too high a loss of hatchability. The percentage of eggs set with a perfect shape and shell, or chicks with perfect navels or legs might also define CCPs. Often these critical control points represent a reference range of ‘normal’ value measurements (temperature or RH, for example). Measurements outside the CCP’s ‘normal’ range should alert the team responsible that action is required.
A Key Performance Indicator relates to the company’s performance, combining different aspects of management to achieve a common goal. A KPI is more likely to be a business target, for example, to achieve ’low numbers of second class chicks’, which requires all teams, including technical staff, involved in production to work together and be jointly responsible for achieving the KPI. The KPI therefore gives the manager a means of evaluating all teams against a common goal.
We can conclude, therefore, that the hatchery manager can effectively manage and evaluate his teams based on SOPs and defined CCPs created to achieve specific KPIs. Evaluation depends firstly on the quality of the data collected, either by instruments or individual teams. Secondly, collected data should be structured in a relational database, such that mean values and the relationships between those values can be analyzed within a reference range defined as accepted or normal.
Advice

• Describe Standard Operating Procedures for the separate steps needed to produce high percentage volumes of good quality chicks
• Define Critical Control Points for hazard analysis and quality control
• Define Key Performance Indicators at both hatchery and company levels
• Define protocols, including reference ranges for the measurement of data collected for each CCP and KPI
• Include proper data collection procedures for each SOP, based on defined CCP and KPI

JSC Floreni on Pas Reform's Smart track

Leading Moldavian poultry producer JSC Floreni will produce a record million chicks each month at its newly updated hatchery complex, with the commissioning of next-generation Smart™ single stage incubation technologies from Pas Reform.
The new installation, which includes nine SmartSetPro™ setters, each with a capacity of 82,944 hatching eggs, will, says company owner Mr Vladimir Saulschi, enable the scaling up of production to 12 million chicks a year and 1,200 t of poultry meat each month.
Originally founded in 1972 as the ‘Kishinev Poultry Farm’, JSC Floreni was the result of privatization and restructuring in 2000, with production from its two sites at Floreni and Tintareni. In 2010, with a change in its majority shareholding, came the opportunity to overhaul operations with substantial investment to create new broiler-rearing facilities, the modernization of its slaughterhouse and improvements in the quality of products being sold under the JSC Floreni trademark.
Today, the company is a leading producer of chicken and poultry meat products for the Moldavian market. Wholly-owned logistics have extended its branded retail operations to consumers throughout Moldova and into the Republic’s capital, Chisinau.
Choosing Pas Reform to partner the company’s ambitious plans for modernization and expansion was, says Mr Saulschi, a logical decision. “As the region’s absolute leader in the supply of incubation technologies, Pas Reform was the obvious and logical choice for us,” he says. “Our plans are progressive and focused on quality at every stage of our operations. Smart incubation, climate control and hatchery automation are making a very real contribution to our growth, improving hatching results and chick livability, while at the same time reducing our production costs.
 “I would say that for us, this was a Smart decision on every level.”

Pas Reform Academy trains hatchery managers in Africa

In collaboration with Ross Zambia, Pas Reform Academy recently hosted a five-day Hatchery Management Training Program in Lusaka, Zambia. More than 25 hatchery managers from across the continent attended, including Ross clients from many African countries such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
The course provided a focused opportunity for delegates to share their own experiences and insights, while at the same time learning more about the latest developments in embryology and incubation.
Now well-established worldwide by Pas Reform Academy, the five-day training format delivered a combination of practical, hands-on learning at a new, state-of-the-art broiler hatchery; interactive presentations were hosted at the Protea Hotel.
Pas Reform’s senior poultry specialist, Gerd de Lange and senior hatchery specialist Martin ‘Tiny’ Barten led the training, with additional presentations from Ross Africa’s Raymond Laing, Dean Houston from Immunovet and Loutjie Dunn from Nutrifeeds.
Speaking for the delegates, Charles Stewart’s hatchery manager, Bishop Soka said, “These five days have filled our heads with many ideas: a much better understanding of the egg, what happens to it during incubation – and how important this is to achieve a healthy broiler after hatching.
“Everything we have learned … will be of value to us as practitioners in our day-to-day practice and to the performance and results of our hatcheries. Our thanks to the organizers: we hope that you will continue to run this course, to enable many more hatchery personnel in Africa to benefit from your experience and better themselves professionally.”

Pas Reform delivers growth for Sarawak’s poultry integrations

With a focus on international expansion, leading Dutch hatchery technology company Pas Reform continues to achieve its strategic aims by committing to the delivery of sustained and consistent growth for its customers worldwide. In Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak on the island of Borneo in Malaysia, the company now accounts for more than 80 percent of hatching eggs produced in a strong and growing poultry sector. 
As a major growth center for business, Kuching serves the whole Sarawak population of around 2.5 million people. Five major poultry integrations are based here, each producing between 150,000-300,000 hatching eggs to meet demand for an estimated total of 1 million hatching eggs per week. 
Pas Reform Hatchery Technologies now supports four of these  poultry integrations with its Smart modular, single stage hatchery technologies: Sing Heng Huat Farming, QL Livestock Farming, Heng Feng Industries, and the latest addition, Yeung Lok Breeding Farm, which is still under construction. At almost 850,000 hatching eggs per week, the combined setting capacity of these four companies represents more than 80 percent of total production. 
Pas Reform's sales director in Malaysia, Dr. Tan Ee Seng, is a veteran of the poultry sector and has worked closely with companies throughout the region since 1990. He says that integrators here were quick to realize the importance of single-stage technologies to their plans for future growth. 
Against a backdrop of rising feed prices, customers using Pas Reform single stage incubators are realizing about 80 grams of feed saving in a 2 kilogram broiler. One customer who produces 100,000 broilers/week using Smart incubation reports saving more than 100 grams of feed easily on a 2.5 kilogram broiler. At an average 1.70 FCR, this compares very favourably with results previously delivered using multistage incubation, where the best average recorded FCR was 1.74. 
Seng said: "Over the years, Pas Reform has remained entirely committed to its customers throughout Asia, delivering true partnership in its solutions for projects of all sizes. 
Pas Reform's Smart single stage incubation has proven its value in terms of performance and results for these forward-looking companies. The Dutch company has also taken practical steps to support the local poultry sector, opening an office in Malaysia in 2008 and appointing an experienced local team, including agent Kenny Tan and more recently a dedicated engineer for the region, Yew Wei. 
"Pas Reform's presence in this region is fully supported by regular customer consultation visits by the company's hatchery specialists and access to Pas Reform Academy training for hatchery staff. Taken together, all these factors have served to build confidence - and to build greatly valued partnerships with our Malaysian customers," said Seng.

Pas Reform opens new logistics and training center

More than 450 invited guests from across the poultry industry attended the launch of Pas Reform's new distribution and training center.

Pas Reform officially opened its new state-of-the art logistics and training center to hundreds of invited guests in October. Customers, suppliers and colleagues gathered in the sophisticated new facility, which incorporates the most advanced computer-controlled logistics capabilities for the delivery of hatchery systems worldwide.
The new center represents further investment by Pas Reform into the future of the hatchery sector. As a company committed to the training and support of its customers around the globe, Pas Reform Academy has become a leading knowledge provider for the hatchery sector - and the new center also includes a new training facility to accommodate the increasing number of poultry specialists visiting the Netherlands to further consolidate and develop their skills.