Words from Patrons – Wenger

“Our Wenger, one of our highly valued founding companies, is participating at events for aquatic and pet food organised by Victam. With this event in Latin America, it is a great opportunity for Wenger to expand their presence within this area and establish lasting relations.

Wenger is a global, family-owned business committed to groundbreaking innovation, shaping the industry’s future at engineering, manufacturing, research and administrative facilities in Kansas, Brazil, Turkey, Belgium, India, Taiwan and Beijing.

For this edition, we are delighted to give the floor to Dennis Funk, Vice President of Wenger Manufacturing, to tell us more about their company and success factors. This interview contains information based on the pet food sector.

What makes participating to this upcoming event in LatAm different than the other markets/events?

Wenger works with many clients in Latin America and this is an excellent opportunity to meet with them to discuss their needs and how Wenger can work with them.

What are your expectations of Victam LatAm?

Wenger’s process expertise in extrusion cooking is world-class, so anytime we can meet with industry professionals, buyers, business owners, etc. to talk about extrusion, it will be a success.

How do you see this partnership evolving in the future? Our participation in exhibitions is driven largely by the involvement of our clients. As long as they find value in this event, we will likely continue to support it.

What is Wenger’s vision on sustainability?

Extrusion cooking and subsequent drying processes can require significant amounts of energy. Wenger offers a variety of process, technology, and automate controls solutions aimed to reduce energy usage and to accommodate alternative energy sources per our customers’ specifications. Sustainability is very important to Wenger and we are constantly looking at innovative ways to achieve this.

展商来说都很有趣。除此之外，我们还有一个关于各种行业主 题的完整简短课程。敬请关注，并定期查看我们的网站www. victamlatam.com，以获取更新和详细的节目信息！

Translated by: 河南工业大学 贾华坡

审核：王雪峰

What are today’s trends within the industry and how do you keep up with these?

The inclusion of fresh meat is quickly becoming a must-have in the product portfolio of most pet food manufacturers. This is no longer a niche market. However, it can be a challenge to manufacture if you don’t have the right type of equipment or process knowledge. For example, an older-style extrusion system will likely be inefficient – and ineffective - to process fresh meat inclusion. Older style systems tend to clog up quickly and/or produce kibble that is too fragile to withstand further processing. Fortunately Wenger has a system – The Thermal Twin – that can produce kibble with very high inclusions of fresh meat. In fact, this is the only extruder on the market with proven performance for this type of food and treats.

What is the biggest challenge within the industry that you are currently facing?

Globally, Wenger’s pet food clients are facing challenges in sourcing ingredients and in the inflationary costs of these ingredients. Wenger continues to work with our clients to maximize their ingredient costs and usage by way of our extremely flexible and efficient systems. Our long-time focus on efficiencies and flexibility have helped our clients navigate fluctuating ingredient supplies and have limited unnecessary waste and rework.

What is Wenger’s greatest accomplishment that you are the most proud of?

Often times, clients initially choose Wenger when they have a challenging project or business needs. Once they employ our systems, they usually become repeat clients. Since every client is different, our greatest achievements happen almost daily as we meet each of our clients’ specifications and help them push the boundaries for nutrition, quality, and uniqueness in pet foods.

What’s the main message you have for the readers?

There is a reason Wegner is one of the tops in extrusion for pet food. When you work with Wenger, you gain the process expertise and innovative equipment solutions needed to improve the products – and profitability – of the nutritional products you make and distribute to pets around the world.