Cobb Española investment gains pace in Spain

With the increasing success of the Cobb500 broiler breeder in Spain and North Africa, Cobb Española is now investing a further €6.5 million (US$7.2) 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 €5 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.

New grandparent farm facilities

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

High numbers of chicks per breeder

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.”

Specialists in nutrition and hatchery science

“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 programme.” Rafael now controls the business from new offices on the north west outskirts of Madrid. “We chose the location carefully,” he states. “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.”