April 3, 2012
New Australian mill to make new livestock feed
A new purpose-built feedmill at Moree (New South Wales, Australia) is set to tap the North West''s ample grain and cotton seed stocks to manufacture a new line of livestock nutrition supplements.
The opening of Integrated Stock Feed''s (ISF) processing operation follows more than three years of planning and an AUD8 million (US$8.32 million) investment in land, equipment, research and development.
The newly-constructed plant converts cotton seed meal, the high protein by-product of vegetable oil production-- into feed supplements.
Strategically located close to a rich supply of oilseed ingredients from broadacre cropping areas of northern NSW, product from the plant at Moree can be trucked north to outlets in Queensland or south into Victoria and South Australia.
ISF chairman Dominic Devine believed the new plant represented a major opportunity for producers to improve their on-farm productivity with a variety of formulations produced at the Moree site.
The mill is licensed to process 100,000 tonnes of cottonseed a year. Completion of a second phase of development will see the plant extended to enable on-site processing of oilseed into the protein meal base.
"It will use a mechanical process to extract the cotton seed meal, which is cleaner than the more common process of chemical extraction, and results in a base protein with higher energy content and improved palatability, and is more valuable than conventional solvent material," Devine said. "The heat in the processing protects the protein which translates into it staying in the animal''s rumen longer."