INTERVIEW: CCPA Group Says its International Strategy Coherent with Evolving Nature of Market

29 March 2021 - Trends such as food/feed safety, or even biosecurity have become even more of a focus in the animal nutrition industry than before the COVID-19 pandemic. For France’s CCPA Group, awareness of these trends has grown significantly and there will be changes in supplier relationships due to COVID-19, resulting in a higher transparency between operators. Within a context of COVID-19 and its travelling restrictions, its economic fallout as well as the resulting higher costs to ship product around the world, CCPA Group is keen to also accelerate its international development strategy and global footprint.

Today, CCPA Group reports €155 million in annual turnover, employs approximately 370 people worldwide and has a presence in about 40 countries, so its activities, like those of any other company, saw varying consequences from COVID-19 which has not had the same impact in every country.

“We recorded growth in 2020 due to our network of customers and to the fact that our solutions are useful for the market. Our portfolio and increased focus on international activities have provided some resilience. So, we are confident for 2021,” said Laurent Roger, Export Sales Director at CCPA Group.

However, CCPA is less of a traditional premix company than in the past, and that has helped with the business resilience referred to earlier by Roger.

“Premix may be our biggest activity in France, but it is not the largest segment of the overall group,” Roger said. “CCPA Group’s business has evolved from premix mainly due to the growth of activities outside France. International activities now account for approximately 80% of our total activities.”

“Our business model has evolved and changed in line with where our global subsidiaries are located. We are becoming an international group,” he added.

CCPA Group operates 11 production sites, five of which are outside of France. And Roger estimates, the group’s total premix and feed solutions production capacity at about 60,000 tonnes/year.

CCPA Group has a strong market position in France, with large shares in the ruminant, pig and poultry premix segments, as well as in the organic market.

Janzé in Brittany is CCPA Group’s headquarters and most modern plant with a production capacity of 40,000 tonnes/year of premixes and feed solutions. Meanwhile, the group’s Deltavit plant in Trégueux, which was built for approximately €8 million a few years ago has a production capacity of 3 million litres/year for liquid nutritional specialties and tailor-made solutions.

According to Roger, CCPA Group has no plans to increase capacities in France in the near future but it will continue to boost automation at the facilities.

In Spain, where CCPA Group acquired Nutega and Novation in 2018, there are plans to increase storage capacity at Madrid-based Nutega in the coming months. Nutega currently has a production capacity of approximately 20,000 tonnes/year. The Novation plant, located two hours away from Madrid and which produces sodium butyrate, recently saw its production capacity double from 3,000 to 6,000 tonnes/year, Roger said.

Acquired by the CCPA Group in 2016, D.I.N. - Desenvolvimento e Inovação Nutricional SA in the northern part of Portugal has two factories: one for premix and feed solutions, the other for pre-starter feeds for piglets. In the last few years, the pre-starter feed activity has been boosted and there are plans to increase production capacity as well as invest in the D.I.N.’s existing lab operations.

CCPA Group is also a shareholder of Euronutec, a Mexican premix manufacturer called Euronutec which is part of Mexico’s Nutec Group. Finally, CCPA Group has commercial subsidiaries in other markets where it does not have a manufacturing presence, such as Brazil, Czech Republic, Algeria, or Turkey, where CCPA invested in Beta Tarim, a premixer, in 2019.

“In the future we would like to develop a manufacturing presence in Asia to be closer to Asian customers,” Roger went on to say.

“In the future, we will aim to be more and more locally based in different geographies. COVID-19 has accelerated this plan for us,” Roger added.

According to Roger, CCPA Group wants to keep growing while remaining close to the considerations of the local markets and companies it wants to partner with.

“CCPA Group and its future partners must be on the same wavelength in terms of company culture and philosophy. It’s not our intent to spread the CCPA brand globally at all costs but give the local companies opportunities to drive and act, as well as grow their own brands,” he commented.

CCPA Group also plays a role in helping local premix partner companies adapt their brands for all markets as legislation differs per country and where customer needs vary and are becoming more and more specific. Roger said that CCPA Group invests approximately €3.5 million in R&D and innovation each year, in part to respond to market trends and remain flexible in meeting customer demand for specialised premixes.

“We have not been slowed down by tailor-made requests. Of course, when smaller, tailor-made quantities are required, there are dosing and automation issues to consider as well as storage and manpower issues,” he commented.

But where CCPA Group claims it really makes a difference is in the anticipation of feed sector and consumers expectations, increasingly geared towards nutritional and sanitary quality of animal products while integrating human health societal expectations and environmental preservation expectations.

“The specialisation of premixes trend started more than 10 years ago,” argued Roger. “We have also been monitoring and anticipating major market trends. For example, we looked at solutions to reduce the use of formaldehyde more than 20 years ago, well before it became a recurrent topic. I could say the same for heat stress in animals which we looked into a decade ago, or the issue of demedication of feed products, which we started investigating 15 years ago. For instance, we began producing demedicated pre-starter piglet feeds about 10 years ago, but the market wasn’t totally ready for the range at the time. Now demedicated sales account for aa large share of our total product sales.”

But Roger stressed that COVID-19 is only one challenge to factor in when growing business resilience or when considering international options.

“We mustn’t forget currency volatility, higher costs, logistics, or African swine fever and geopolitical tensions which impact trade. In our view, these issues have more of an impact and more immediate consequences than the lingering COVID-19 crisis,” he said.

“We are well positioned for growth, but we need to remain modest and adapt.”