Poultry breeder Cobb benefits from new facility

Cobb Europe is benefiting from new research and production facilities after the recent acquisition of Hybro and restructuring in Ireland.

The former Hendrix Genetics pedigree farm at Herveld is now part of Cobb’s global research programme, working in parallel with research and development in the US. It was established as a 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 microbes 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 10m parents a year and help in developing new products,” says Steve Parsons, managing director of Cobb Europe.

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 nine rearing farms and 14 production units, and will be using two hatcheries for parent stock production. The van Gent hatchery at Veenendaal, producing 5m parents a year, has been supplying chicks to Cobb customers for almost 20 years.

Cobb Europe now also has a parent stock production centre in Eire, taking over the seven production and rearing farms within the breeding operations of Cobb Ireland. The firm’s production director, John Vincent, is in charge.

“The increased capacity affords a significant increase in security of supply chain through to our customers while maintaining the highest quality standards and consistent delivery of genetic improvements to our expanding customer base,” said Mr Vincent.