Toggle nav
Interview with MR. GIJS SCHIMMEL, President of Centurion Poultry, Inc.
To View as PDF, please click here.
Centurion Poultry, Inc. of Lexington, Georgia was appointed as a distributor for H&N ‘Nick Chick’ layers in the USA. This was announced in March this year. Rich Wall, of the H&N’s Sales and Technical Service department, recently sat down with Mr. Gijs Schimmel, Centurion’s founder and president, to discuss more about his company and his reasons for switching to ‘Nick Chick’.
Gijs, first of all, we at H&N welcome you to the global community of H&N distributors and we thank you for your decision to join us. As a start, please give us some details on the founding of Centurion, some key developments in the history of the company and its current activities.
“After Hypeco closed its business, the bank became the owner of the US assets. I was asked to help divest as the bank was not interested in continuing the US operation which had a history of being far from profitable ever since it was set up in 1984. Even though the company managed to sell the Bovans layer genetics; at that time the new owner had no interest in taking over the US operations. Having had the opportunity to work on the restructuring of the operation, and with the bank willing to work with us in taking over what was left; Louise and I decided this was the right time to start a business of our own. We took over some of the farm and hatchery leases and leasehold improvements from the bank and made an agreement with the new owners of Bovans Genetics to bring grandparent stock to the US and become their North American distributor. The first seven years in particular were tough years. I’m afraid one day my children will say the same about growing up as I did. In 1998 things started to look brighter. Our company had rooted! We were able to establish a new farm on a nearly 750 acres (300 hectares) site in North Georgia, USA where our headquarters have been located ever since. Since then, we have added hatcheries and breeder facilities in Pennsylvania, Alabama and Iowa and currently we are supplying close to 20% of the layer chicks in the US.”
It would also be interesting if you could provide us with some insight into your decision to change from your previous breed to ‘Nick Chick’.
“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to distribute the ‘Nick Chick’ in the US. Over the years the vision between the genetics supplier and ourselves on how to continue growing our position in the US market slowly started to go in different directions. I think both parties tried hard to make it work; not in the least because of our shared history. But eventually a decision had to be made. The way I look at it is like a marriage. You are either married and are a team or you fail and are better of divorced. We reached that point early this year and we decided it would be better if we would each go our own way. We have had many challenges over the years and we often turned them into opportunities! This change of suppliers for our genetics is no different. We are looking forward to turning this challenge of change into an opportunity to build a sound, mutually beneficial relationship with the H&N team and make the H&N ‘Nick Chick’ layer leading again in the US market!”
The current Avian Influenza crisis in the United States is the worst in its history. Thus far, Centurion’s facilities have not been affected. How would you briefly describe the steps you’ve taken to keep AI out of your farms and hatcheries?
“We have a 120,000 breeder complex and a hatchery with yearly production capacity of 18 million pullet chicks in the American Midwest. That is about a third of our company’s total capacity. Our mid-west operation is situated in an area in the state of Iowa with a high density poultry population. Although we have no other poultry in a more than 5 to 6 mile radius from our facilities, there were massive outbreaks less than 15 miles away which definitely made us uncomfortable. Fortunately, we have always had a very stringent bio-security program featuring showers in facilities among its requirements. Yes, the hatchery added fumigation of interior and washing the exteriors of chick trailers before returning from deliveries and also going through a truck wash just before delivering baby chicks to our clients. Our breeder farm is completely self-contained with its own growing houses and never using any contract labor for moving, vaccinations or other chores. We had already implemented measures such as not allowing road vehicles on the premises and changing footwear twice (upon arrival after showering at the complex entrance and again before entering each individual unit from the outside). All Centurion employees must sign a statement which verifies that they don’t have contact with any other poultry. For us these are standard operating procedures so nothing is new to us. Other than adding high alerts to catch human errors in following the protocols, we really have not done much different from what we normally do. Bio-security lapses are always my main concern. I believe that generally egg producers have good bio-security protocols, but it is all about implementation and constant surveillance. It may turn out that bio-security lapses have been the main reason why the HPAI outbreak has become so massive!”
Recently, per capita egg consumption has risen rapidly in the US market. Taking the current AI crisis into consideration, how do you view the future of the US market going forward?
“Thank you for asking this ‘million dollar question’. If only we knew! Very few, if any, had expected the egg consumption in the US to increase as fast as it did in the past several years. The same goes for the fact that the HPAI outbreak did not change the public’s perception of egg safety, or that the sharp increase of the price for eggs did not seem to have bothered the consumers. The popularity of eggs is expected to stay high for other reasons as well. We lost roughly 10% of our egg layers in the USA due to HPAI. We will reduce or eliminate some exports, we likely will import some eggs, yet it cannot make up for the loss. My ‘crystal ball’ says it will take a very long time to re-populate what was lost due to HPAI, because of limiting factors like pullet rearing space and chick availability. So an egg shortage coupled with good profitability for the producers for the remainder of 2015 and 2016 is very likely! But when the re-population is completed, 2017 and 2018 may be a different story ... I think other countries have gone through such supply disruptions over time with the same outcome.”
In closing, Gijs we thank you for your time and the insights you have shared with us.
Rich Wall