De Heus Animal Nutrition is a leading global supplier of nutritional products for animals and the power behind the progress of egg, meat, milk, and fish producers around the world.
De Heus was founded in 1911, and though they are an international company producing seven million tons of feed annually in more than 70 countries located in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, they are still a family-owned company that can trace their roots back to the Netherlands. In fact, half a million tons of the feed produced by De Heus comes from the mill in the Maasbracht, Netherlands and their aftermarket partnership with ANDRITZ helps keep them running.
When De Heus purchased the mill in Maasbracht in 2013, everything inside had to be replaced. Marcel Jeurissen, the plant manager at this long-established mill located along Julianakanal remembers it well and recalls that it was a stressful and exciting time for De Heus. “The company had just purchased the facility, but even so, it had to be up and running in a very short window of time. The equipment was all very old; everything had to be pulled out, new electrical systems and automation were required, but the ANDRITZ machines were there, and we had it up and running on schedule, April 1st, 2014.”
“The feed industry is unlike any other manufacturing industry. When you make a car or a refrigerator the parts are the same every time, but we are working with natural ingredients – these ingredients are different each time you encounter them. We have to make constant adjustments, and we have to make progress with these ingredients every day."
"The world depends on a healthy supply of food products, and this originates from quality feed. We can only meet this growing demand by exploring new markets and introducing innovative formulas that help farmers get more eggs from one chicken and more meat from one cow.”
Marcel Jeurissen,
Plant manager
“This is our mission; providing tailored solutions for every kind of farmer because no two farms are alike. Say a farmer grows his own wheat, and he wants to utilize that resource; De Heus creates a formula that provides his animals with the nutrition they need from the wheat he grows.”
De Heus currently produces over 700 of these individual formulas with each one running at approximately 15 tons per hour. Their equipment must run longer hours with less downtime to meet the needs of each individual farm and farm animal.
This is why the ANDRITZ equipment was a must for De Heus. The high capacity motors and the quality construction of their pellet mills, conditioners, and expanders provided an increased range of 20 tons per hour, meaning De Heus could run above capacity while maintaining a high-quality product.
“Running at this capacity makes regular maintenance absolutely necessary to prevent an outage, but when an emergency does happen, ANDRITZ is right there.” Jeurissen shared, “An incident occurred just a few weeks ago - we had a broken shaft bearing. This particular piece of equipment usually takes two weeks to deliver, but we couldn’t wait that long. We called ANDRITZ for a solution, and while we were on the phone with their customer service representative, they located an available engineer.” Jeurissen exclaimed, “He loaded the parts into his vehicle and drove them straight to the plant in the Netherlands. We were up and running again within 24 hours.”
This kind of responsiveness is the main reason De Heus chose ANDRITZ equipment. “The equipment is good, but their aftermarket service is the best in the industry. We know that if we need a part or an engineer, ANDRITZ will not hesitate to send someone – not just to the Netherlands but from Brazil to Vietnam.”
