Busy bee concept for feed production process control
//29 
Nov 2009
Apis is Latin for bee. Worker bees take care of the babies, make wax, build the honeycomb, clean up the hive, store pollen, make honey, guard the hive, and collect pollen or nectar by humming from flower to flower. With this in mind Norwegian company Prediktor created APIS Spektron Feed, a real time inline feed processing monitoring and control system.
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Spektron Feed in practice
The first two systems were placed at Felleskjøpet Agri’s feed mill in Stange in 2007. The system paid for itself in less than a year with savings on ingredients cost. “We have chosen the Spektron system, because they were able to supply the inline NIR probe as well as the software,” says Vebjørn Nilsen, Process Manager at Felleskjøpet Agri. “Control of raw materials is very important, because there is a lot of variation. Protein content in barley, for example, can vary from 8.5 to 12%,” he adds. Last year Felleskjøpet Agri started a new project with Prediktor to continually measure grain quality and this year the cooperative intends to install more systems in other feed mills and expand the grain quality project.