New feed business in Spain to profit pig farmers

Eric Hindson (pictured on the right) has been in the pig industry for 55 years and whilst still a British National is a Spanish resident and has worked in the Spanish feed industry for several decades. Hence it was logical for him to establish his business there.

Hindson is the president of ASN – Alternative Swine Nutrition. His company has five employees and a key player is another Brit, Simon Tibble (pictured on the left), who is responsible for all the formulations. “ASN’s success is that we have no investment in plant, as all our feed products are made under contract by specialist manufacturers based mainly in Tarragona In addition, we are just selling concentrates, so our transport costs are far lower than if we had been selling finished feeds”, commented Hindson.

ASN’s range extends from creeps through pre- starters to growers, with a vet taking care of QC at the different mills that ASN uses. The company will start exporting to Russia and Italy in 2015. It’s still allowed to feed zinc oxide in Spain , to counteract digestive upsets and scours. Hindson doesn’t like this. “As you kick out the good bugs as well as the bad ones. I am therefore working hard to find an effective alternative”, he says.

Certainly, ASN are going places and making serious inroads into the Spanish pig feed market and all this has to be good news for the end user – the Spanish pig producer.