The United Soybean Board See for Yourself program’s second tour spot at PROAN near San Juan de los Lagos in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, was one of the group’s two feed processing facilities.
The high-tech computerized plant we visited together with the second plant produces 220 metric tons of feed per hour. One of the plants is used exclusively for poultry feed. 78% of the feed produced by PROAN is used for the poultry operations while 20% is for swine and 1.5% for dairy cows.
Each type of animal feed is manufactured in separate production lines, thus preventing cross-contamination.
The manager of the feed processing facilities told us corn and sorghum is stored in silos that hold 8,500 metric tons each. He also told us they use an entire silo in just 4 days.
Soybean meal and DDGs are stored in the warehouse as are other feed additives such as synthetic amino acids lysine and methanine. All raw materials have specific storage locations where they remain until converted into animal feeds.
100% of the soybean meal PROAN uses comes from the United States. SOme is imported directly as SBM, while some comes into Mexico as whole soybeans and is crushed in a plant in Guadalajara, Monterrey or Matamoros.
PROAN requests 47% protein content soybean meal and are overall very happy with the quality of U.S. soybean meal they purchase.
PROAN buys more than 80% of its corn and sorghum from the United States. They purchase DDGs from POET in South Dakota. PROAN is also a distributor for DDGs in Mexico.
With such an expansive livestock operation, they are processing and hauling a lot of feed every day. We were told they have 90 trucks and can load a truck with feed in 3 to 5 minutes and load 100 to 110 trucks per day. We were told that PROAN also provides services of transportation and storage of raw materials to other companies in the area.
In the laboratory we met Mario Alba Gallegas, Chemical Engineer who oversees testing of the raw materials/feed ingredients. He told us they take 20 samples from every train (100- 120 car train) and they keep those samples for 3 months.
The PROAN laboratory samples every load of sorghum.
It was explained to participants in the USB See for Yourself program that PROAN designs and formulates feed rations which are programmed into the computer in the feed mill a week in advance for each of their farms. However those formulations are monitored and can be easily altered if the need arises.
The plant runs 16 hours per day – 2 eight-hour shifts – with 12 workers inside the plant. The plant operates 6 days per week. In total,Corporation Manager and Chief Veterinarian Alfredo Biecerra told me there are 35 to 40 workers at the plant if you include the “outside” workers such as gardeners.
This facility is modern, very clean, and appears to have a worker-friendly environment.
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