When the only independent hatchery in the UK had plans to expand production capacity to five million day-old chickens per year; their facilities management company was tasked with seeking a compressed air company capable of designing, installing and supporting a system to supply the facility.
Efficiency throughout the production chain
The hatchery supplies its customers and the company’s own commercial egg-laying operations with consistently high quality chicks. It needed to scale-up production to meet increased consumer demand for poultry and poultry meat products. This meant adopting fully automated processes which manage the relationship between egg variation, incubation temperature profiles and length of the hatch window. All of which contribute to delivering reliable uniformity.
Compressed air drives automated production
The hatchery includes a fully flexible chick processing line in order to deliver the ‘perfect chick’ with the scalability to expand to 2,200,000 birds per week. Delivering automated production results in birds of uniform size and weight for processing, this in turn adds to the bottom line of the hatchery. With poultry consumption expected to increase substantially in the coming decades as a result of population growth, it’s essential any solution could service this expansion.
Minimising waste and energy with compressed air
One key area hatcheries are focused is energy saving cutting costs. Energy costs as a factor in the cost of producing a day-old chick have increased by more than 50% since 2000. So ensuring the configuration of compressor, pipework and line feed are as efficient as possible, is critical to keeping energy costs down. All these factors contributed to the selection of Cambs Compressor being appointed by the Facilities Management company.
