Cobb Española expanding production capacity in Spain

With the increasing success of the Cobb500 broiler breeder in Spain and north Africa, Cobb Española is now investing a further EUR6.5 million (US$7.2 million) in expanding production capacity.

Two years ago, the company made a major investment in the hatchery at Dueñas in northern Spain following the earlier purchase of the former Hybro grandparent facilities.  In a EUR5 million expansion, the hatchery capacity was increased to more than five million parent chicks a year to provide for a doubling of sales in the previous six years.

Cobb Española followed this with development of new grandparent farm facilities within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of Dueñas, and has now agreed to hatchery expansion which will take capacity up by another two million chicks per year towards the target of 10 million.

The rise in sales throughout the marketing area – the Iberian peninsula and North Africa – is particularly strong in Spain and Morocco where the breed is the market leader and in Algeria where sales have grown from 50,000 to 1.7 million parent stock in five years.

“It’s easy to see why the Cobb breed is so successful,” said Rafael Gil, general manager of Cobb Española.  “You know where you are with Cobb. The performance at breeder and broiler levels is predictable. You don’t get any nasty surprises. Customers are achieving consistently high numbers of chicks per breeder, good growth and feed efficiency in the broiler and, importantly too, high yield and uniformity at the processing plant.

“For our part we have strengthened our technical services team and appointed specialists in areas like nutrition and hatchery science to support our customers. And the continuing growth in our sales across our region gives us the ongoing confidence to step up our expansion program.”

Rafael now controls the business from new offices on the northwest outskirts of Madrid. “We chose the location carefully,” he said.  “We’re ideally located close to the main perimeter road around the city, within easy reach of both the airport and main railway station and about 100 minutes’ drive to Dueñas.”