Huvepharma is a fast-growing global pharmaceutical company with a focus on developing, manufacturing and marketing human and animal health products. These pillars are the basis of our company name, Huvepharma: HUman and VEterinary PHARMAceuticals.
Mr. O.P. Singh, Managing Director, Huvepharma SEA Pvt. Ltd., which caters to the Indian subcontinent, shares with us his views about emerging trends in the Indian Animal industry and many more in a recent e-interview with Think Grain Think Feed.
Please throw some light on the possible impact of slow moving global economy at present, on the Indian livestock sector. What kind of emerging trends do you visualize in Indian Animal Feed industry in the near future?
Mr. O.P. Singh: With the evidence of slowdown in global growth, and persistent unemployment in every sector, Indian livestock sector, which is domestic centric, ought to be used to is full potential to harness rural employment opportunities. Indian animal feed industry will certainly witness higher demand for animal protein as a result of more urbanization and increase in incomes, while the availability of raw materials, increasing commodity prices and volatility will remain paradigm of environment. In all probability, the Indian livestock sector shall face difficulty of high price volatility in future, and therefore industry has to raise transparency in agricultural commodity markets and maintain competitiveness. Although the feed production will continue to grow, the challenges must be met with better technology, continued innovation to improve efficiency of feed within the animal system. For its local consumption as well as for the export of finished animal products, India needs to produce feed and food without compromising on the feed safety standards.
Could you please tell us something about the category-wise market share of feed additives produced indigenously and imported in the country?
Mr. Singh: It is evident that India does not produce amino acids at all. Therefore, the largest market share of feed additives will fall in the amino acid category followed by vitamins and vitamin premixes next to coccidiostats and remaining categories would be nutritional feed additives.
It is anticipated that there will be significant growth for both, the existing ones and any innovative speciality feed ingredients. As alternative raw material sources increase, to address the significant rise in cost of feed ingredients, the need for nutritional additives gets buoyant. The properties of these raw materials might also require different technological additives for proper handling and their utilization within the animal system.
What is your take on the adoption of GM (genetically modified) crops technology? The failure of gm-cotton crop recently in India has come as a big setback to this technology. Once again it has become a hot topic and is hitting the headlines in India.
Mr. Singh: Although most of the developed nations view GMO cultivation as an important technology capable of providing sustainable solutions to increase yield, as it can help in lowering the presence of undesirable substances such as aflatoxins. In order to meet future challenges combined with growing national population, India has to embrace and test the efficiency of GMO cultivation, to meet dwindling natural resources and tangible demands of food grains.
The fragile and non-scientific arguments may not support the daunting task of per hectare productivity, so as to maintain the pace of growth of the feed sector. More and more experiments will have to be done with the crop technology, including movements like niche market development & organic feed production.
According to one study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, last year, antibiotic use as feed additive is expected to double in India and in few other countries. Please comment.
Mr. Singh: “Natural” “Organic” “Hormone-free” “Pesticide-free” “Non GMO” “Antibiotic-free” “Raised without antibiotics” “No antibiotics”- these are current fashionable jargons consumers encounter when they visit food stores, but a country like India has to search a very robust structured national action plan. We need to be concerned about food safety and animal rearing efficiency with an assumption that residue and resistance are two different issues. Serious scientific intervention is required to understand realistically reforming process and its availability. Keeping food safety as primary concern, decisive structured strategies have to be devised to encourage feed additive market in India ensuring qualitative growth of quality proteins with affordability as benchmark.
Since the current AH scenario is changing from antibiotic growth promotors to non-antibiotic growth promotors, please comment what are the possibilities for alternative medicines & how Huvepharma is looking forward to support the feed industry?
Mr. Singh: We at Huvepharma have always related ourselves to the consumer priority and their welfare. It is inaccurate and alarmist to define the future course of action, but we remain committed to Research and Development, scientific excellence, innovative technologies, transparency and trust to design our goods and service for futuristic looking feed industry with high degree food and feed safety norms.
Poultry is highly susceptible to new disease, how Huvepharma is going to look at it?
Mr. Singh: We are not only a major player in Europe but globally take lead in offering best of latest technologies and add value to the stakeholders. We take pride in unveiling not only the global infrastructure of excellence but also very scientific surveillance approach of disease monitoring. We have no hesitation in announcing the association with Symbiosis School of Biomedical Sciences, Symbiosis International University, Pune in order to cater value added services like disease monitoring, continuous education to the technical resources involved in livestock industry, and short courses for farmers and integrators in sensitising emerging & threatening disease pattern in India.
Please tell us broadly about Huvematic concept, the recent winner of All About Feed/FIAAP Animal Nutrition Award.
Mr. Singh: Having a long tradition and know-how in enzyme production and purification, the Huvepharma R&D department has developed instant water soluble enzyme powders by using a unique concept of purification and formulation. Besides the fact the enzymes need to be highly concentrated, they also need to be instant soluble in (cold) water. The Huvematic® is an on site, on demand liquid enzyme production system. The Huvematic® is a special developed machine which reconstitutes dry concentrated enzyme powder into liquid enzymes. The machine offers the opportunity to feed mills to produce tailor made liquid enzymes on demand at their production facility. It uses the special developed highly concentrated, instant water-soluble enzyme powders to produce liquid enzymes. The Huvematic® together with the instant water soluble enzyme powders replace the Intermediate Bulk Carriers filled with liquid enzymes.
What are the milestones achieved by Huvepharma SEA so far? How does the company look forward, like 10 year down the line?
Mr. Singh: Huvepharma’s primary philosophy of existence remains trust, transparency, and technical innovation. We would certainly prepare to take lead in three of our major portfolios of business like mycoplasma management, coccidiosis management and alternative additives and growth promoters. We already have established our leadership globally in enzyme technologies offering world renowned concept of Huvematic®. We prefer to be the most trusted partners by our customers with the promise to add value to their performances commercially and technically in order to compete in their internationalisation of business.
