The facility, which is located in Cangzhou, Hebei province, around 150km from Beijing, will produce short and medium-chain fatty acids as well as essential oils.
The factory has a capacity of 60,000 tons on an annual basis, with the possibility for such capacity to be doubled to 120,000 tons of feed additives per year in the future, said Hebei Delvigent Biotech (Delvigent).
To ensure the highest quality of products, RMB 100m (US$15.4m) was invested in the production facility. Delvigent outlined how the factory has been built according to rigorous standards to ensure product quality, to limit safety risks and to minimize the environmental impact of production. High quality equipment along with an intelligent production management system have been deployed in the new plant, said the company.
Leveraging existing knowledge
Marcel Sengers, general manager, Delvigent, told us the business was only established in 2018, and that it currently has 20 employees
It was founded by a group of likeminded international investors, all of which had more than 20 years of experience in the area of animal health and feed additive development, he said.
Buis Ebbinge, who set up the Dutch feed additives business, Daavision, in 2004, a company that is now part of ADM following its acquisition of Neovia, and Dr Sam de Snoeck, a former partner in the largest veterinarian service in the Netherlands, also co-founded Delvigent.
“We found each other in our shared view of the need for better antimicrobial replacement solutions to enable a sustainable future for agriculture. We believe that our concepts and our knowledge can support our customers worldwide to realize their targets in animal nutrition, better performance and especially a reduction in the use of antibiotics,” said Sengers.
China was chosen as the location for the company’s first ever production facility due to the fact it is one of the biggest global markets for animal nutrition and has good availability of high-quality raw materials, he said.
Following an initial career in finance, around 10 years ago Sengers began working in the feed additive industry.
“I worked for Daavision, first as their finance/logistics manager and later on as manager of operations. After the acquisition of Daavision by Neovia in 2016, I was appointed the general manager of Neovia's feed additive factory in China (Pancosma Jiangsu Feed Additives Co. Ltd). These positions gave me the opportunity to build experience on both the operations side and in general management [of the feed additive business]; they also allowed me to [learn about working in] different cultures.”
Delvigent is heavily focused on R&D in terms of optimizing products to reduce the use of antibiotics in animal farming. Dr Harrison Xie is heading up that division in the company. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Idaho in the US. “We strive to deliver the best feed additives in the business. This is why we have built a multidisciplinary research and development team which can focus on all aspects of our solutions,” he said.
