Q: Dr. Saurabh, can you briefly tell us about Trouw Nutrition and yourself.
Dr. Saurabh: Trouw Nutrition, a Nutreco company, is a global leader in animal nutrition that has been supporting farmers, integrators and the feed industry for 90 years with beginnings in 1931. We are a part of SHV, a family owned company that had sales of €19.2 billion in 2019. SHV owns a group of companies that deal in energy, retail, heavy engineering, and investments. Nutreco is the animal nutrition division of SHV with two global brands Trouw Nutrition and Skretting.
Our mission is “Feeding the Future” and we aim to be at the centre of balancing feed-to-food chain by ensuring sustainable development of resources to meet the surging demand of animal protein. At the same time, we also address the various important environmental, societal and public health concerns like food safety, responsible usage of antibioticsand sustainable sourcing.
I joined Trouw Nutrition in June 2017 as a part of Nutreco’s broader plan to establish and expand the footprints of Nutreco in South Asia. To fulfil our objective, we have established the production facility at Jacherla that will cater to our customer demand for premixes in South Asia. We have also put in efforts to increase awareness of animal nutrition industry among young and emerging talent, so that they can play a significant role in our growth story. Prior to joining Trouw Nutrition, I worked with Pfizer and MARS in different capacities for last 20 years and my last role was Country Director for MARS Petcare Indonesia.
Q: You had joined Trouw Nutrition in mid-2017. What operational changes you find in working of the company pre 2017 and post 2017 era, and how it helped the company to grow?
Dr. Saurabh: We had operations in India since 2013 through our sales representative, post 2017 we have heavily focused on building a team of subject-matter specialists who can drive our core values – Caring, Capable, Collaborative and Innovative – to serve our customers. The biggest challenge for us was that we were an importing unit and faced concerns with lead times. To address these challenges, we became the first independent operating company within Trouw Nutrition to start with a Greenfield project.We have always been very customer centric and the premix facility reflects our commitment to a growing South Asian market and our prestigious customers. We have also brought in the integrated solution approach of Trouw to India post 2017 focusing on some of our innovative technologies like Mycomaster, NutriOpt On-site Adviser (NOA) along with a dedicated Customer Service Laboratory – MasterLab in Hyderabad.
Q: Trouw Nutrition has recently established a state the art manufacturing facility near Hyderabad. Can you tell us in detail about this facility and how can it help to meet the growing demand of South Asian Market?
Dr. Saurabh: The state-of-the-art production facility is located at Jadcherla, around 80 kms from Hyderabad. Some of the key features of the facility are:
- Aunique high-end technology to ensure that we have the best quality of premix for our customers.
- We ensure end-to-endQuality and Traceability through our company-wide program, Nutrace. Through Nutrace we focus on all aspects of quality with added emphasis on feed-to-food safety.
- The facility ensures that the final product remains untouched by handthrough complete automation from raw material handling to automatic bagging.
We are certain that this unique premix facility will serve our customers’ demand for quality products.
Q: Trouw Nutrition has been able to penetrate in Indian market, now what plans you have to give value added services to Indian Poultry Farmers?
Dr. Saurabh: As mentioned, we offer integrated solutions combining our innovative portfolio. We have a unique Feed, Farm and Health approach,bringing services that cater to this holistic approach. Currently some of the services we have brought to our customers are NutriOpt On-site Adviser (NOA) which helps in accurate nutrient analysis to achieve precision nutrition goals of farmers and feed millers.Another innovative technology is Mycomaster which provides quick analysis of mycotoxins to enable quick-decision making for our customers. Being an integrated solution provider means that we will have a combination of Products, Services, People and Models for the major challenges being faced by livestock industry today like responsible usage of antibiotics, feed safety, mycotoxin and salmonella challenge, and optimum mineral nutrition.
Q: Dr. Saurabh, you are looking after the Indian Feed Additives market for quite some time. Indian poultry and livestock market are flooded with feed additives. How do you see your products are different than other feed additives available in the market?
Dr. Saurabh: Trouw Nutrition always had a very unique portfolio of products in feed additives ranging from Feed Safety, Gut Health Solutions, Salmonella Control, Mycotoxin Management and Mineral Nutrition. The difference always starts with investment in team and people. We have expanded the team by adding Feed Additive experts and strengthening the technical team with dedicated programme managers.What also makes our products different is the years of research and innovation we invest to develop them. We have world-class researchers and research centers where we conduct our R&D operations which have gained global recognition in the industry. We spend € 50 million globally on innovation and R&D annually.
Q: What are future plans for Trouw Nutrition India? How is the company gearing up for the same?
Dr. Saurabh: We have both organic and inorganic growth plans for expansion of our footprints in South Asia. We have our operations in B2B segment but in future we will be expanding to B2F. NuFrontiers, the investment arm of Nutreco, has invested in start-ups like Eruvaka, which is an Internet of Things (IoT) based organization to play a larger role in the animal/aqua production cycle. Our major business was in poultry but we are expanding fast to cater all species like dairy, aqua and pets. All our measures remain focused to provide responsible, cost-effective solutions to our customers and progressive farmers.
Q: Trouw Nutrition belongs to NUTRECO. Can you tell us what are the interconnections between NUTRECO and TROUW NUTRITION?
Dr. Saurabh:Trouw Nutrition is one of the global brands of Nutreco that caters to the animal nutrition. The other brand of Nutreco is Skretting for aqua nutrition. Trouw Nutrition was started by Adolf Trouw in 1931 as a family business and in 1994 the business was acquired by Nutreco as a strategic decision.
Q: Globally there is strong demand for optimizing the nutritional resources available with us. Do you think that nutritional products in livestock industry can contribute to optimize the natural resources specially the products of Trouw Nutrition?
Dr. Saurabh: Our business goals, in alignment with our mission “Feeding the Future”, are to ensure sustainable development to feed our future generations. One of the key aspect for this is to ensure optimization of natural resources through precision nutrition. We use digital tools and big data to sustainably improve feeding and farming practices while meeting production objectives. With precision nutrition as a key focus area of innovation, we have NutriOpt – an innovative, digital platform that encompasses raw material data, least cost formulation, feeding programmes, nutritional insights and system optimization to support sustainable precision farming.
Q: Trouw Nutrition has major research facilities in Europe and North America, How can you ensure the global solution with local needs of Indian market?
Dr. Saurabh: Currently, we have five global research centersacross species in Canada, Spain, and The Netherlands. All the research conducted and proven in these research centres are validated into the local environment and conditions in different countries including India. The in-house research is complemented with over 90 long-term research collaborations with scientific institutes across the globe. In India, we have conducted validation trials with many Indian universities and research farms which help us to understand the efficiency of our products under local environmental conditions.
Q: In Poultry industry consistency of quality is a major problem specially in premixes and feed additives, how do you ensure that poultry producers get the best and consistent quality in every batch supplied by Trouw Nutrition?
Dr. Saurabh: As global leaders we definitely have a huge focus on quality of all our products. To ensure feed-to-food safety, quality and traceability we follow a company-wide program, Nutrace®. We ensure uncompromising standards from raw materials to finished products nullifying our customer’s risk. We follow a completely transparent operation with stringent five-step quality check for customer confidence and satisfaction.
Q: Can you tell us how much impact COVID 19 had made on the poultry industry and what step it should take to revive, especially for poultry producers getting the remunerative price for their product.
Dr. Saurabh: We have definitely seen an impact of CoVID-19 throughout the industry even before CoVID had hit India because of false rumours regarding consumption of meat and egg. This has impacted our industry with lower placement, less feed production and crash in market prices. However, this has also been an opportunity for all of us since the industry started aggressively promotingbenefits of consuming meat, milk and egg to improve immunity. The industry is bouncing back with a positive trend on end product prices.
The current consumer trends definitely demand for safe food with responsible usage of antibiotics, processed chicken and utilization of digital technology/IoT platforms to improve efficiency and productivity.
Q: You have been watching poultry industry very closely and what message would you like to give to poultry farmers in India and Indian subcontinent.
Dr. Saurabh: We are a consuming economy with all the production currently being consumed locally. To sustain the huge demand from a growing population, with India expected to have the largest population in world by 2025, we definitely need to look at cost-effective measures for improving production. There are opportunities for exports and value-added products. Farmers need to look at an integrated approach of Farm, Feed and Health to produce high quality products and capture the available opportunities.