Mark Doyle has been promoted to vice president of Betco Agri-Housing division of Betco Inc in the USA. The division manufactures pig and poultry housing and sells in over 60 countries worldwide. Betco also has announced the retirement of co-founder Buddy Whitney.
Skiold of Denmark has appointed Jens Vinther Jensen as its export director, in charge of sales and marketing of the group’s equipment for pig production and feed manufacture. He also becomes responsible for the Skiold company in Moscow that equips Russian pig units and feedmills.
Erik Ovesen joins Hog Slat of the USA in July 2008 as general manager of its activities in centre/east Europe and to oversee the creation of new company Hog Slat Europe.
Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health has revealed details of key personnel in its newly merged business. Executive team chaired by Ruurd Stolp (senior vice president and president Animal Health) has Raul Kohan as deputy head and Hugo Wahnish as vice president of Global Regions. Dr René Aerts is vice president in charge of research and development/biologicals and Dr K.J. Varma is vice president R&D/pharmaceuticals. Dr Malte Greune moves up to vice president for the global supply chain; Dr Andreas König is appointed Quality Head in global quality operations. In the regional teams, Leopoldo Nanni heads Asia I region; Pieter Jan Brouwer becomes head of Asia II; Hans Guenther Dittrich is appointed head of Europe I and Pieter Gerrits heads Europe II. Head of Latin America region is Ralph Cabezas and the regional head for North America is Paul Casady.
DuPoint and Danisco’s Genencor division have announced a joint venture in USA to produce ethanol from non-food and non-feed materials in a so-called cellulosic process. The starting investment of US$140 million over 3 years will be for a plant that produces the biofuel from by-products of sugarcane and corn crops. What straw is being considered as an additional raw material at a future stage.
Dr Armin Vikari has joined Pancosma in Switzerland as product manager – Bioactives. He will be responsible for overseeing the global development of the XTract brand of phytogenic products.
Anitox in the USA has appointed Dr Peter Street as technical director for its animal feed safety ingredients business. He will have overall responsibility for all technical, regulatory, R&D and laboratory matters in the company's Europe/Middle East/Africa region.
Weda Holland bv is a new company established in the Netherlands by Weda Dammann & Westerkamp of Germany, with Richard Donkers as general manager, to take over the former activities of Dutch liquid feeding equipment company Van Zelderen Fluid Handling & Process Control.
Svanova Biotech AB of Sweden is collaborating with the Institute for Animal Health's Pirbright Laboratory in the UK to launch an on-farm test for foot-and-mouth disease virus. The test kit is said to give a result within 10 minutes, from the exposure of a tissue sample to a reagent.
Novus International Inc in the USA has announced a worldwide agreement today with emerging biotechnology company BioResource International Inc, naming Novus as the exclusive worldwide marketer for BRI’s patented pellet-stable enzyme technologies. These will be added to its Cibenza feed additive enzyme portfolio.
Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc, USA, has named Tim Bettington to be senior associate director of swine marketing in the BIVI Swine Division.
Provimi in the Netherlands has reported group sales up 19.8% at €532.5 million for the first quarter of 2008, largely due to higher selling prices caused by increased raw material costs. Sales in Poland led the way with a 27.1% increase. The group noted further price increases for soybeans, grains, vitamins and phosphates and said market conditions in animal nutrition remained challenging, notably for pig feed.
JSR Genetics in the UK is sponsoring a PhD student at University of Kent biosciences department to identify fat gene markers which will allow geneticists to predict how and when fat is laid down in the carcase, eventually enabling producers to tailor pigs to suit specific markets and cultural variations in meat preferences.
Jim McPeak has retired as president of Babcock Genetics Inc in the USA after being with the company since 1972. He is replaced as president by his son, Jim McPeak Jr.
Prairie Swine Centre Inc in Saskatchewan, Canada, is suspending operations at its 600-sow PSC Elstow Research Farm subsidiary and an associated feedmill, saying that the enterprise’s operating costs and debt load meant it would have stayed unprofitable for some time based on projected feed and pork prices.
Andrew Yersin PhD has been promoted to director of research and development at Kemin AgriFoods North America.
