October 20, 2010

Alltech sponsors GOAL 2010 in Malaysia

Alltech has announced that it is one of the sponsors for this year's Global Outlook for Aquaculture Leadership (GOAL) held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on October 17-20.

This aquaculture business event organised by the Global Aquaculture Alliance, has been extremely successful with over 300 business leaders attending from around the globe. The meetings theme "Feeding the Rising New Middle Class", will address how the aquaculture industry can evolve sustainably and profitably while meeting world demand towards seafood.

This sponsorship is considered part of Alltech's industry involvement program and reflects the commitment towards supporting sustainability projects in aquaculture development. With this, Alltech can further their relationships with aquaculture leaders, enabling the company to listen and engage with their issues and needs.

Dr. Jorge Arias, Global Aqua Director of Alltech, said, "Alltech's plan is to produce sustainable products to create and maintain a sustainable aqua industry. We developed a line of products that include natural additives and ingredients for aquaculture species - our Aquate line of products."

"Our goal is to focus on healthy alternatives to non-sustainable ingredients, such as fish meal and fish oils. The recent acquisition of the algae production plant, the second largest in the world, in Winchester, Kentucky, will help us accomplish those goals," Dr. Arias said.

"We are delighted to receive the generous support from Alltech. With their dedication to addressing sustainability in aquaculture through research, we believe their work can help move our industry toward a better tomorrow," said Dr. George Chamberlain, President of the Global Aquaculture Alliance, USA.

In addition to signing the silver sponsorship of the event, Alltech is also the sponsor for Lunch and Learns Session on the Tuesday program, in the topic "Sustainability of Aquaculture".

The fishmeal shortage is here to stay and the industry needs to develop a long term strategy to deal with this.  "With the increasing pressures on fish meal usage, Allzyme SSF allows producers in the region greater flexibility when it comes to the use of vegetable proteins in the diet. In some instances fish meal usage has been reduced by up to two thirds of its normal levels," said Max Purser, General Manager of Southeast Asia, Alltech, who is based in Malaysia and attended the meeting.

The disease challenge poses another big threat to aquaculture producers and is causing massive losses affecting bottom-line performance every year.

"Improving immunity is a critical factor in our region and in particular improving the ability to deal with the challenges within the environment. We have seen significant increases in mucus production in fish with the use of Bio-Mos in the diet," Purser said.

"By improving this mucus layer we see major improvements in health status and as such growth performance. In fact what we are doing here is significantly reducing the risks out of the growing cycle," he said.