De Heus dips its toes in Serbian compound feed market again

Dutch feed group, De Heus, has acquired a second Serbian compound feed plant. The facility is based in Cuprija, in the center of the country.

The demand for high quality cattle, poultry and pig feeds is rapidly increasing in Serbia, said the company.

The new plant is favorably located, from a geographical perspective, it continued. The site enables it to easily reach livestock farmers in South Serbia but also in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania.

A spokesperson for De Heus said the Balkan region shows good growth potential.

"We can contribute to the further professionalization of the animal livestock sector."

The broiler segment, in particular, is developing well in Serbia, he added.

The acquisition comes hot on the heels of extensive investment in its other production facility in Serbia, which is located in Sabac, in the north-west of Serbia. De Heus reported in December last year that it had set about modernizing the production process at that plant while expanding capacity by 50%.

The Dutch feed specialist said the new Cuprija facility will be entirely remodeled with the work scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018, after which the plant will be commissioned. It also intends to further expand capacity at its Sabac site. 

On completion of those projects, the two plants will then have a joint production capacity of 260,000 tons, said De Heus. The company's current output in Serbia is currently somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 tons, said the spokesperson. 

The total volume of the feed market in Serbia, according to Alltech's Global Feed Survey 2017, is around 2,9m metrics tons. Swine production accounts for the biggest percentage of those feed volumes, followed by the dairy segment, then beef production, with the broiler segment coming in fourth.

Central European investments

In March this year, De Heus, acquired a grain silo and compound feed facility in Kendice, in Slovakia, in a deal it said strengthened its ability to provide high quality feed to customers in Central Europe.

That acquisition followed on from the expansion of capacity at its feed facility in Běstovice in the Czech Republic in 2015. Along with that factory, De Heus owns a feed manufacturing facility in Marefy in the Czech Republic; that plant has an output of 150,000 tons per year. The feed produced at those two factories is targeted at livestock producers in both the Czech and Slovak markets.