November 19, 2013

With an aim to double its production volume to 80,000 tonnes of poultry meat in live weight by 2016, Russian poultry producer OAO Ptitsefabrika Reftinskaya, located in the Sverdlovsk region, is expanding its business.

On June 25th 2013, a brand new, high-tech hatchery with Petersime incubators was inaugurated, with a capacity of 44.5 million eggs per year. The total setting capacity at Reftinskaya now reaches 68 million eggs annually.

The new hatchery is equipped with the latest technology: 20 BioStreamer^™ setters and 18 BioStreamer^™ hatchers from Petersime have been installed. The setters hold 115,200 eggs each. Moreover, the hatchery is equipped with modern installations for automatic candling and transfer of eggs from the setter trays to the hatcher baskets (55,000 per hour), washing machines, chick sorting machines, etc. The equipment was delivered by the German company Hartmann.

"Before the official first egg setting we ran the incubators in a test environment: we went through the entire incubation process and the results were very satisfying," said General Manager of Reftinskaya Nikolaj Toporkov during the inauguration.

Construction of the new hatchery took less than 1.5 years and was partly subsidised by the Chairman of the Government of the Sverdlovsk region, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of State Property of the Sverdlovsk region. Besides the hatchery, a new four-tier cage facility is being installed, which will increase the broiler capacity to 175,000 birds.

Petersime is the world's leading supplier of incubators and hatcheries. Headquartered in Belgium, Petersime has a worldwide network of agents and distributors in over 60 countries.