This year there are many large delegations from Russia and Eastern Europe bringing with them investment capital to help resource the technology and partnerships needed to maintain the still very dynamic growth in livestock production taking place there.

Euro Tier and VIV falling in the same year was not perhaps ideal from some points of view and many of the major exhibitors appear to have decided that the time had come to split the two events into one primarily for poultry and the other for pig and cattle producers - a process that began at VIV earlier this year which few pig producers or exhibitors attended. This gave a new tighter focus to VIV making it a very strong poultry event and this process has continued with Euro Tier. The management of Euro Tier have very wisely responded with the timely addition of a renewable energy theme and an even greater concentration on innovation which seems to have more than offset the sharply reduced poultry presence.

Of the many thought provoking and important new innovations that caught our attention on day 1, the following stand out:

• The new Arato high flow water filtration system for livestock barns which provides truly clean water to the animals improving both health and performance and preventing the build up of bio film in water lines.
  
  

• Hölscher + Leuschner receives the Gold Award for innovation. Managing directors Peter and Marc Leuschner accepts the award handed over by DLG President Carl-Albrecht Bartmer (right) and Dr. Peter Paziorek (left) Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Germany.

  The gold medal winning Image Processing System from Holscher & Leuschner for automatic health control of sows in group management which provides individual animal monitoring in demand feeding systems through imaging of the rear organs and data analysis to alert the stockman of inflammations, prolapses, abortions, urinary infections, and discharges.
  
  

• The silver medal winning and remarkably simple Swingfix self catching sow box door from Bernhard Mannebeck Landtechnik.
  
  

• The silver medal winning Silo-RoBoFox robotic feed silo cleaner which deals with the long standing problem of effective silo cleaning to prevent the build of feed residues, moulds, and insects. It is adjustable to silo size and which completes each cleaning programme by drying the feed silo with hot air.
  
  

• Also from Arato the excellent water line freezing prevention system which uses a high quality pump and intelligent valve recycling system to ensure that drinking lines do not freeze even at very low temperature and over long runs. Running on only 9kw and switching itself on when needed this is a low energy use solution to one of the most de-motivating jobs faced by free range and extensive producers - thawing out the water lines on a really cold morning.

There is a generally a more confident mood taking hold in the livestock industry, EU pig farmers look ready and are at last able to once again open up the reinvestment programmes that are so critical to the maintenance of long term competitiveness – and the good news is that the economic predictors are saying that the trend will last.

ThePigSite Editorial