The delegation that arrived in late January represented aquaculture operations across Asia—tilapia farmers from the Philippines, shrimp producers from Vietnam, salmon growers from a land-based operation in China. What they shared was a common interest: improving feed quality and reducing dependence on purchased complete feeds.

Visit Program

RICHI structured the visit around demonstrations of floating feed extrusion lines scaled to different production volumes. The tilapia producers watched trials on a 5-ton-per-hour line similar to what they would need for regional distribution. The shrimp farmers focused on smaller equipment with the precision required for larval and juvenile feeds.

Discussions covered the nutritional factors affecting aquaculture performance: protein levels and sources, energy density, fatty acid profiles for different species. RICHI’s applications engineers walked through formulation examples, showing how ingredient selection affects both feed cost and fish growth.

The operator training sessions addressed practical concerns: startup and shutdown procedures, die changes, troubleshooting common problems. Quality control workshops covered sampling protocols, lab testing, and correlation between process parameters and finished feed performance.

Strategic Outcomes

By the visit’s end, two delegations had requested proposals for specific projects. A third scheduled follow-up discussions for the following month. The salmon producer, still in planning stages for their land-based facility, requested technical data for inclusion in their feasibility study.

For RICHI, the visit reinforced the importance of application-specific expertise. Aquaculture feed production differs fundamentally from livestock feed; the equipment must accommodate smaller pellets, higher fat inclusion, and water stability requirements that don’t exist in terrestrial feeding. Demonstrating that expertise face-to-face builds confidence that catalogs alone cannot provide.