Cobb Europe: New research and production facilities
The acquisition of Hybro and the restructuring of Cobb Ireland expand the production facilities for Cobb parent stock in Europe, and provide a major research complex in the Netherlands.
The former Hendrix Genetics pedigree farm at Herveld is now part of Cobb’s global research programme, working in parallel with R&D in the US. It was established as a state-of-the-art facility with rearing, production and hatching on site and was one of the earliest to test and install a filtered air positive pressure system to screen out micro-organisms as part of its modernised biosecurity precautions.
“The Hybro acquisition gives us some excellent facilities that will considerably expand our own production base to more than 10 mln parents a year and help in developing new products,” says Cobb Europe MD Steve Parsons.
The overall capacity has now more than doubled between the company and distributors — Cobb Germany supplying central and eastern Europe, Cobb Spain serving the Iberian area and north Africa and Cobb Sweden serving Scandinavia.
In the Netherlands Cobb has taken over 9 rearing farms and 14 production units, and will be using 2 hatcheries for parent stock production. The van Gent hatchery at Veenendaal, producing 5 mln parents a year, has been supplying chicks to Cobb customers for almost 20 years. The hatchery at Putten, owned and managed by John Torsius, has a similar capacity and complements the van Gent hatchery with similar equipment and identical quality standards.
In addition to the main supply base for grandparent generation stock in the UK, there is a smaller grandparent hatchery at Warder, run by the Beunder family, which is located conveniently close to Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, for shipment to customers around the globe.
Cobb Europe also now has a parent stock production centre in Eire, taking over the 7 production and rearing farms within the breeding operations of Cobb Ireland.
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