Investing in greater quality

Bewital Petfood is a family-run, medium-sized manufacturer of premium pet food in Germany. The company sells its products for dogs and cats under the Belcando, Leonardo and Bewi Dog brands in Germany and more than 50 other countries. Exports account for nearly 50 per cent of overall sales.
Now Bewital has invested around € 14 mio in the construction of two new, ultra-modern production plants. "This investment was a huge initiative for us," says managing director Dr Jürgen Wigger. He stresses that the construction of the two new factories represents an investment in quality and is not simply a question of extending capacity. 15 new employees have been taken on to get the new plants up and running.
Bewital marked the successful commissioning of the two new facilities with a family day for staff and their relatives and an open day for trade visitors. Over a three-day period the company showed over 800 invited guests from Germany and abroad around the new plants. 

In one of its two new factories, Bewital is now manufacturing moist food for classic tins and freshness pouches, but can also process fresh meat there for dry food. "In this way we can see in advance the meat that will subsequently be processed into dry food," explains Dr Christoph Deitert, head of product development at Bewital. "For the pet it doesn't matter so much what the actual percentage of fresh meat in the product is. It is the quality of the fresh meat used that dictates the flavour," he states. "We have tested meat grades that our dogs have turned their noses up at, and so we have decided to use only muscle meat. This has led to a huge improvement in the flavour of the products."

In the second new plant, premium and super-premium dry food are manufactured using a technology that is globally unique at the moment. It is a thermal mix process in which more fresh meat can be processed in the dry food. One advantage of this technology is that even more of the natural contents of the ingredients are preserved. For example, while roughly 40 per cent of vitamin A is lost in conventional production processes, this loss is reduced to around ten per cent with the new process. 
According to information provided by Bewital, the new production process offers the opportunity to use a much higher proportion of fresh meat than in conventional extrusion methods. The company is using a new combination of extruder with upstream phase separation to be able to utilise maximum…