Exclusive AGcelerate episode: live from VIVMEA 2021

[00:42] Welcome, everyone, this is M Tech AGcelerate. My name is Nicola Shchetikhin and I have Jim Johnston with me. Hi, Jim 

[00:48] Hi, Nick. How you doing? Good, good. 

[00:50] You know, we are getting to more exotic places to record our episodes of AGcelerate, and now we are in Abu Dhabi. 

[00:58] Yeah, Abu Dhabi. It’s been great this week, Nick, we We’re VIV Middle Eastern Africa. And we’ve negotiated all the COVID-19 controls and restraint it’s quite incredible. The guys have organized this event, really successfully. They’ve been quite disciplined about entry. To get into this event. Every morning, we’ve had to show our COVID vaccination passport, every morning, we’ve had to show our negative PCR tests before we’re allowed any entry. 

[01:29] Yeah. And yesterday, we had to do another one. To you know, to continue coming and then leaving the country. That’s, that’s quite impressive. So it’s, you know, thumbs up to organizers for having such a great security measures to ensure that everybody’s safe and can meet and take it into account. There are so many people in here, you know, 

[01:51] yeah, we’ve we’ve had a really busy day, this is day three. In fact, we’re kind of at close out time of the event. And we’ve been incredibly busy in the last hour as we’ve been trying to record this episode. People keep coming for a chat, which is great, but day one was really busy, really, really busy with good footfall through the event. Day two was slightly less. Although the organizers are telling us that the attendance was exactly the same as it was in the previous video, Middle East and Africa for day one and day two. And we thought today would be slow. 

[02:26] Yeah, but no, it was it was people are still coming and going visiting our booth. And yeah, we have quite a lot of good contacts and it’s real great to see people and companies and partners and clients. Everybody’s you know, just going. The place is buzzing 

[02:44] Yeah, it’s great to be back out meeting people talking chickens, we really enjoy that. So and besides the attendance has been you know, there’s a lot in terms of the themes, the main themes for the event, we’re really picking up a lot of pharma companies here a lot of feed additives you know, a lot of these companies are here from all over the world. They even saw some Russian companies exhibiting here that came from your homeland, 

[03:08] Several companies. That was again pharma and some additives quite a lot of medical companies of course, you know, regular players equipment, breeding companies. All that is always an interest to the industry. 

[03:24] Yeah, so that’s, that’s been really good. And the market here in the Middle East a very exciting place to be at the moment because there’s a lot of potential investment here is a lot of activities, people out shopping, because they’re going to be buying houses, equipment. So a lot of Greenfield investments going on in this part of the world is their governments are supporting the growth of poultry products produced in in their own land in the Middle East.  

[03:53] Yeah, and also Middle East is a very special place because the poultry industry in many things are quite new in here because of you know, the rapid growth of population and cities and infrastructure and everything that is needed food. Right. And that was not quite readily available, and also taking special conditions again, very high temperatures, you know, desert, no much water. So you need to deliver everything and that requires quite a lot of new construction because probably 10% of the chicken is produced inside the country all the rest is imported. 

[04:37] Yeah, that was very, very low. It’s increasing rapidly now those people are invest in companies expand. And there’s even more expansion we were talking to a company from Saudi Arabia yesterday said it’s the government’s objective to get the industry up to 80% of domestic consumption. And you know, they are currently sitting at 60% Somewhere around there. So there’s a real  push on here in all Middle East countries to grow their domestic poultry production. 

[05:06] Yeah, like you said, it’s all, or almost all is a greenfield project. So which means that companies are bringing all the latest and greatest technology into their production. And not all of those companies are huge, And we saw that quite a lot that many, and many of the smaller farmers, startups and just young businesses are coming in inquiring about technology. Yeah, 

[05:33] Yeah, like you said, it’s all, or almost all is a greenfield project. So which means that companies are bringing all the latest and greatest technology into their production. And not all of those companies are huge, And we saw that quite a lot that many, and many of the smaller farmers, startups and just young businesses are coming in inquiring about technology. Yeah, 

[05:57] Yeah. And again, connectivity and Internet, and all of those technologies are helping those companies to develop faster and better get better results. And that’s why they’re it’s quite a competitive market. And that’s why also they’re looking for the best technology to help them with the growth. 

[06:16] Absolutely. Right. So products, you know, like IOT, and people talking about IoT, even on the smallest of farms, really just trying to get real time hooked in through their phones to what’s happening in their poultry houses. It’s incredible the interest level in that new technology or recent technology, isn’t it? 

[06:35] So yeah, yeah. Which is good for us and for any other players that are in the tech area of the poultry industry. So it’s, it’s been really nice to be out and about, and especially in this part of the world. I mean, I was not expecting to see so many people attending, but it’s been great. 

[06:56] Yeah, it certainly met the expectation we had on day one. I mean, we were hugely excited to be here. Great to meet people again, and we kind of had the feeling it was going to be a really busy three days, and we’ve not been disappointed. It’s been it’s been strong. So it’s excellent news, or had a lot of work to do afterward. So it’s been great. It’s been good, and we hope to be back. But there are more shows coming ahead of us. And the next one is probably IPPE in Atlanta.

[07:25] Yeah, we’re really looking forward to that. So winds that 25-27 of January and January, anybody looking in we we’d love both Nick and I, we’d love to see you there. So we’re really looking forward already to that event in in what is it sort of to two months, I guess two months down the track? 

[07:43] Yeah, quite quite close. And there will be some slowdown season towards the New Year and Christmas and then it will start picking up and we were really hoping for a good start of the year. And we probably will do couple more episodes before that time. And I don’t know if we’ll be able to ensure more exotic places. Maybe this will be through our regular home offices but would be great to meet you and will be great to see you face to face. But if you want to just follow us and where we are, what we doing and even like industry news, they can be found in our telegram channel, which will be linked down below. 

[08:26] Excellent, good, Nick. Well, hey, we look forward to putting the next podcast out there and to talk and chickens with all you people that are watching and following us. So, we’ll see you next time. 

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