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Feed processing technology

The feed technology group focuses on the production of fish feed in the entire processing chain from raw material handling and processing to technical feed logistics solution to customer sites. Ewos Innovation disposes a fully automated pilot scale fish feed production plant that serves both as a playground for technical process development and a production plant for small scale trial diets. An in-house rheology and spectroscopy lab analyses feed samples for process- and quality control.

Focus areas for technology research and development include:

- Raw material development
- Raw material process ability
- Process monitoring
- Process modeling and optimization
- Optimizing technical feed quality
- Energy efficiency
- Minimizing emissions

The efforts to optimize existing production equipment and evaluating new fish feed manufacturing technology require close cooperation between nutritionist and technologists. Together we investigate the influence of the production process on the nutrition changes from raw material to finished feed.

The nutritional requirements of salmonids put strict criteria on physical quality of the products such as the ability to absorb oil and the ability to withstand impact and abrasion. In addition salmonid feed must have a specific sinking speed and water stability.
Highly specialized process equipment is needed to optimize feed quality and at the same time be flexible enough handle many different raw materials with different process abilities.

Innovation in technology are validated both in full scale factory operations as well as in fish trials to eliminate up scaling differences and to verify that that novel and improved technology does not negatively influence the nutritional quality of the feed. In addition, introduction of new raw materials can be difficult to process in the existing production setup and all new raw materials are screened and investigated from a processing point of view.

Method development
EWOS Innovation is continuously developing new methodology to determine the quality of raw materials, feed and fish. The method development program emphasizes both detailed product knowledge, and the development of rapid methods which can be applied at the farm sites and operating companies. Due to the large increase in raw material suppliers we have greatly increased our growth trial capacity and also developed rapid trial techniques.

Techniques like Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR), Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), invitro enzymatic digestion methods and other are continuously helping us to find new and better biomarkers/metabolites to explain raw materials and fish digestion.

Speed of innovations

EWOS Innovation is continuously developing new methodology to determine the quality of raw materials, feed and fish. The method development program emphasizes both detailed product knowledge, and the development of rapid methods which can be applied at the farm sites and operating companies. Due to the large increase in raw material suppliers we have greatly increased our growth trial capacity and also developed rapid trial techniques.

In the laboratory we are always pushing ourselves to find and discover new solutions. This to get better and rapider results or to get more information about
the samples we analysing. One of the most advanced technologies in the laboratory is the HFNMR (high field nuclear magnetic resonance)  instrument which is an tool able to profile
a variety of molecules without extensive sample extraction. We use it to characterize raw materials and fish feed, and to find micronutrients of interest.

Feed processing Technology Centre

The R&D facilities in Dirdal include a modern feed production Technology Centre with a complete fish feed production line.  Researchers work continuously to further develop the fish feed production process, in order to increase the technical quality of feeds and optimise the production process in EWOS factories world wide. This Technology Centre has a wide range of research facilities - suitable for the production of diets for feeding trials, process optimization and the testing of new raw materials and production equipment.
The Technology Centre has put a big emphasis on environmental issues during feed production process. Modern energy saving systems are installed on many different processes, allowing a focus on low energy consumption and low emissions to water and air.  This has given us solutions for reducing the smell from the fish feed production process, which has been implemented in several of our factories – which was well received by the local communities