Sited in the coastal region of Champotón, in the State of Campeche, the new hatchery will comprise three SmartSetPro™ 2 setters, three SmartSetPro™ 6 setters and eight SmartHatchPro™ hatchers. The large setters will be uniquely used to incubate CD line female eggs, while the smaller setters will be dedicated to incubating AB line male eggs.
With eight hatchers, GAPESA is targeting one hatch per week, to enable the single delivery of 45,000 female breeders plus corresponding males, creating a start-up capacity of up to 2.3 million breeders per year.
However with an optimised layout, the potential for expansion is being built-in to the new facility, to increase capacity to two or even four hatch days per week with minimal disruption. GAPESA will collaborate with Aviagen from Alabama in the USA for the supply of its day old grandparent stock.
The company’s CEO, Mr. Mario Gabilondo, has commented on the Group’s latest investment, saying: “We are excited about starting our new grandparent venture, which represents a great opportunity to create a new, state-of-the-art facility for an assurance of quality and reliability throughout the Group’s integrations.
“We wanted a single-source supplier of incubation equipment with a solid local presence. Pas Reform’s operations have grown substantially in Mexico in recent years, clearly demonstrating the advantages of single stage incubation by results, and equally making a serious commitment to the market here by investing in a dedicated team of specialists to provide localised support and expertise.”
GAPESA’s parent company, JBS in Brasil, already has a large GP hatchery with Pas Reform which has, says Mr Gabilondo, delivered compelling results. “Together with the additional support of an international pool of incubation specialists,” he says, “all these factors combined to give GAPESA real confidence that Pas Reform was the right partner for us in this venture.”
Ranulfo Ortiz, Pas Reform’s business development manager in Latin America, concludes: “Pas Reform has been installing single stage incubation technologies and investing in the Mexican market since 2002. Now, 15 years later, we are established both here and worldwide as a truly single-source supplier, delivering outstanding technical results and with a specialist local team to support optimised performance in our customers’ hatcheries.
“We are absolutely delighted to have been selected for this key new project by GAPESA Group and look forward to working with them to realise a future-focused breeder operation here in Mexico.”
The new GAPESA hatchery will become operational in the first quarter of 2018