The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Golden harvest for producers
Oilseed rape: North-east producer Norvite expects to process 6,000 tonnes per year for use in feed market
Investment in an oilseed rape crushing plant to produce feeds for the agricultural and equine sectors is paying dividends for Scottish animal feed firm Norvite.
The company opened its NEOS crushing plant, officially known as Norvite Expeller Oil Seeds, in 2015 following a £600,000 investment.
Last year this was expanded thanks to a further £150,000 of investment and the site now boasts three presses with the ability to process 12,000 tonnes of oilseed rape every year.
The company’s managing director, Edward Smith, said an estimated 6,000 tonnes of rape will be processed this year and all grain will continue to be sourced from nearby farmers’ co-operative Aberdeen Grain.
He said this would produce 2,000 tonnes of pure cold-pressed rapeseed oil, which the firm markets under the Neoflo brand, and 4,000 tonnes of rapeseed meal which is sold under the Neopro brand.
Mr Smith said: “The moisture content (of the oilseed rape) is quite critical for our particular process. If it’s too wet it’s very hard to filter the oil and if it’s any drier it’s quite hard to crush it.”
He said the optimal moisture content was 7.5%, although anything within half a percentage of this would be acceptable.
Technical director David Mcclelland said the company was pressing the oilseed rape in the same way that extra virgin olive oil is produced, and both the oil and rapemeal products produced in the pressing process had been well received by industry.
The oil goes mainly to the pig and poultry market, and there’s also a good equine market for it.
For laying hens, the addition of rapeseed oil into the diet had a positive impact in terms of egg size, for pigs it offered a good source of energy, and in the equine market a number of leading feed manufacturers were using it in their products, added Mr Mcclelland.
He said the rapeseed meal was blended into the company’s various feeds for the ruminant market, and more recently a special feed, known as Neolac, had been produced for the dairy market.
The new product, which is being trialled on dairy farms in Ayrshire, is essentially Neopro which has been further processed with an additive to improve its digestability and protein quality.
Mr Mcclelland said: “From the outset we wanted to substitute the more expensive soyas and rumen protected fats used in dairy diets.
“For dairy cows, energy density and dry matter intake are the key factors. If you don’t produce the energy in their diet, they strip it off their back. The key is keeping them in condition.”
He said feed products such as soya and protected fat supplements were essential tools for giving dairy cows energy, however there was a growing appetite in industry to find alternatives for them.
Mr Smith said trials had successfully shown that Neolac could replace both soya and rumen protected fats in dairy cow rations.
And further trials were under way to look at the product’s impact on milk constituents and yield.