EAI's Cattle/Dairy solutions are scaleable and customizable. So whether our customers are making small batch premix ingredients or the entire process, we have a solution for you. This interview is with a dairy customer of ours that purchased an entire modular premix system. See his answers for yourself why this solution was perfect for his operation.
Name/Company: Andrew Oddy, Herd Director
Title: Alsafi Danone
Location: Saudi Arabia
Overview: With more than 20,500 milking cows, and a total of 58,000 head of cattle, they produce 830,000 liters of milk per day. Alsafi Danone had earned the title of "World's Largest Integrated Dairy" from the Guinness Book of World Records.
What problems were you having that you sought out this solution for?
Oddy: The decision to make premixes on the farm came from a couple of reasons. First, when we wanted to change a premix we had to go through the manufacturer and we had to negotiate with them to put the ingredients we wanted into our premix then we had to negotiate a new price for the premix and this whole process took a period of maybe 2-3 months of negotiations before we got the project on the doorstep. The second reason was that we had a lot of cost assessments and we found out how much the individual commodities cost to make the premix and it just made sense for us to buy ourselves and make our own premixes because the difference in the cost is tremendous.
Why did you end up choosing EAI over others?
Oddy: We looked at quite a few different companies and the Easy Automation system and solution were very appealing to us because a lot of the other systems are vertical and not horizontal so it is very costly for a building and its not easy to actually take charge of something like that. So the Easy Automation system was a nice compact solution which didn’t require too much space.
How has the whole process with EAI (from sales, to install, to ongoing service) gone?
Oddy: It all went very good because one thing I like about Easy Automation is that you’re very accessible and if we do have a problem, or when we were doing the installation work it was very easy to catch hold of your people to talk us through any problems that we had.
What improvements in milk production have you seen? (As a rough %)
We have noticed improvements in the animal health side of things. And even though we have a very high standard for animal health, we’re seeing improvement through being able to do our own premixes and making sure that the formulation is 100%.
How did EAI’s integrated solution (controls, software, equipment all with the same company) make this process easier?
Oddy: It has given us good control on all our procedures and everything. We have procedures written in place now for the running of the plan. The actual computerized programming of the plan is very good, and this is why I want to take it to our next stage which is our PMR system that we’re putting in and we want to hook your program into the PMR system now.
What reduction in feed costs and shrink have you seen since starting the system up? (As a rough %)
Oddy: The payback on the entire premix system was 4 months. That was including the building. The total package was about 1.25 million dollars and the payback was 4 months.
How did EAI’s customizable solution help you get exactly what your facility needed?
Oddy: Yeah the whole package is 100 percent of what we wanted.