Olmix American Seminar 2018: Blue biotechnology for the future of animal farming

If last year Olmix Group hosted the first Olmix American Seminar in São Paulo, Brazil, there was no better place than Mexico, where the company has recently strengthened its distribution network, to hold the second edition of this very event along with more than 100 customers, partners and professional experts from the animal industry.

Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit, venue at the Pacific Coast of Mexico, was the best possible scenario not only to discuss the trending topics in the field of animal health, nutrition and welfare in Latin America, but also to share the latest strategies that Olmix Group has come up with through research to move towards a new way of production by making the most of blue biotechnology.

“We are very proud of the development of Olmix Group in Mexico. In ten years we have achieved many good things in the country and we will continue betting on algae and marine resources to bring new innovative solutions to our partners and final producers to optimize productions while better taking care of both animals and humans. We are very happy too, to host this seminar in collaboration with our Mexican distributor”, Mr Edgar Chi Moreno, Olmix Group’s Area Manager in Northern Latin America, said during the opening speech on the first day of the seminar.

Discovering the potential of algae

Moderated by Mr Alberto Celis, from Engormix, the conference programme opened on the second day of the event, where several international experts raised many questions around the potential of resources that come from the sea to develop circular economy and ‘to produce more with less’.

“The main goal is to produce more food using less resources and this means using different resources! And, of course, seaweeds are the ones to be taken into account. In a nutshell:

• We have to increase the efficiency of the resource we use.
• We need to close our production cycles.
• It is not possible to continue to use nutrients only once.
• Renewable resources are the key!

Everything that we produce has to be reused by one way or another. So we should bet on health seafood technology: to provide alternatives for pesticides and antibiotics and also bioactive health compounds, like Olmix Group’s MSP®!", Mr Sander van den Burg (Wageningen University, the Netherlands), declared.

Mr Van den Burg’s speech was followed by the lecture of Mr Marinus van Krimpen, also from Wageningen University, who completed the presentation of his colleague by giving a deep insight into the future of animal farming from a global point of view:

"The main challenges for the feed industry are resource efficiency, healthy animals, people and sustainable farming. While cereals consumption will stay stable till 2080, for meat it is planned to increase by more than 30%! Arable land is going to increase only 4% while cereal production will be increasing 46% and meat production more than 70%. That's why we have to look at the sea to find new resources. Polysaccharides from algae have many biological activities that can improve gut health and immune status. They are high responding compared to other feed additives. In vivo but also in vitro trials show very good results”.

Precisely, the high number of biological applications of algae and their impact on the whole food chain has led Olmix Group to develop a complete marine algae processing chain and a unique biorefinery process, as Ms Danièle Marzin, Olmix Group’s Marketing Director, discussed at the last presentation of the programme:

Presentation of Algimun®

In the afternoon, SOA 2018 also offered a wide range of technical workshops divided by species (poultry, pig, ruminants, aqua and pets) to shine a spotlight on the hottest topics concerning mycotoxin risk, digestive welfare and efficiency, immunity, and productivity in the farm.