16 Sep Making Fish Feed Pellet in Bangladesh

I. Great Demand for Feed Pellets
Bangladesh is a south Asian country and has an extensive water resource in the form of ponds, ditches, lakes, canals, small and large rivers and estuaries covering about 4.34 million hectares, which contributes to Bangladesh being the fourth world’s leading inland fisheries producer. It is reported in 2014 by FAO that total output of aquaculture products in Bangladesh has increased to 35 million tons. Aquaculture production in Bangladesh has shown an average growth of 28% every year. Fish farming in Bangladesh is playing an important role to the total national income of this country.
Moreover, fish is the primary source of animal protein for Bangladeshi population, especially poor rural households. Fish constitute such an important part of Bangladeshi food culture. Therefore increasing population partly translates to increasing demand for fish.
Fish feed is the most important concern in commercial fish farming. With the growing demand for fish, the use of aquaculture feed in Bangladesh has grown substantially. It seems that commercial pelleted feeds are beginning to replace “farm-made” and “raw” unformulated feeds. At present there are at least 25 commercial fish feed mills in Bangladesh. But the total fish feed pellet production is not sufficient to fulfill the increasing demand for fish feed. Therefore there are great demand for million tonnes of locally-formulated and processed fish feed pellet in Bangladesh.

II. Raw Fish Feed Materials in Feed Pellet Making

1. Main ingredients
Main ingredients used for fish feed production are rice bran, mustard oil cake, fish meal, maize, soybean meal and others, which can be collected from local market or need to be imported from the other countries.

Rice bran: mainly produced locally, and is derived from rice mill. It constitutes 8% of the weight of the whole grain and contains most of the nutrients(65%). Large quantity of rice bran is produced every year and almost all of it is either thrown away or used as low level animal and poultry feed. Only 30% of total rice bran production of Bangladesh is used for commercial animal feed production. The main factories produce approximately 0.13 million tonnes of de-oiled rice bran per year during production of rice bran oil.
Soybean meal: 35-40% provided by the local supply and 60-65% imported from the India.
Mustard oil cake: the local production of mustard oil cake is 0.23 million tonnes, which can not meet demand for feed industry. Fish meal imported is necessary.
Fish meal: made from a variety of local trash fish, crabs, bad fish and other aquatic animals, which are dried and processed by the related processing factories. About 80-85% of fish meal used in fish feed production come from local sources.

2. Proximate Compostition of Ingredients
All the feed ingredients are analyzed to determine its proximate composition: protein, lipid, ash, crude fiber and nitrogen free extract.
Proximate composition of feed ingredients (dry basis)

III. Opt the Right Feed Making Machine
Pellet making machine is the key for fish feed pellet production. Opt the right pellet making machine, the pellet quality can be guaranteed. There are two types of machines in the market: fish feed pellet mills and fish feed extruders.
The feed pellet mill mainly consists of two rollers turn separate ways to compress the mixed ingredients and force them into the die. Fish feed extruder is a bio-reactor cooking the mixed ingredients under temperature, moisture and pressure to force feed mash in the barrel through a restrictive die. It can process highly plant origin ingredients, high temperature and pressure increase gelatinization. That’s why digestibility increase.

                                                                      Dry Type Fish Feed Extruder

Compared with these two kinds of machines, more terrific can be done by the extruder than that of a pellet mill as follows. That’s why feed extruder is favored by most of fish feed producers.
1. Fish feed extruder can produce fish feed in every densities and also produce unlimited types of feed (especially pet foods).
2. Fish feed extruder can process high level moisture mixes and ingredients (until 55%); pellet mill can produce feed pellets with moisture content is about 16-17%.
3. Cooking rate by feed extruder is higher than 90%; cooking rate by the pellet mill is about 50%
4. There is no bacterial contamination in extrusion, because of high temperature application. But for the pellet mill, there is a risk to see a bacterial contamination in last product and it is hard to use different fish feed formulation.
We are the specialized manufacturer in fish feed extruders. We have great cooperation with many countries in the world, like the UK, Nigeria, Bangladesh and etc.. our feed extruders consist of dry type fish feed extruders and wet type fish feed extruders. For most of pellet production in Bangladesh, the dry type fish feed extruders are the most economic choice because dry type feed extruder is in lower price compared with wet type and suitable for small and medium sized feed pellet plant.

IV. Fish Feed Pellet Production

1. Proportion of Fish Feed
Three different feeds denoted by A, B and C are prepared by mixing the ingredients in various combinations so as to give three different protein levels: 30%, 35% and 40%.
Composition of fish feed at different protein level

Notice: Higher temperature and air humidity in summer and rainy season in Bangladesh, feed pellets produced in this period are prone to be mildewed. So making feed pellets during this period, mildew preventive should be added in feed ingredients.

2. Fish Feed Production Line
The process of making your own fish feed pellets generally includes grinding, mixing, extrusion, drying and packing.
a.Grinding by fish feed grinder: increase the contact area between feed, improve the digestive absorption of substance, nitrogen and energy and reduce the feed coefficient. Generally, the materials for fish feed pellets should all pass through the 40 mesh sieve and not more than 20% left on the 60 mesh sieve. For making carp feed pellets, the optimal grinding fineness is 1.7mm.
b.Mixing by fish feed mixer: the important part to ensure compound fish feed pellets quality. Uneven mixing will lead to uneven distribution of variety nutrients in the fish feed pellets and then affected greatly the fish growth, even cause death of fish in severe cases. Here we can adopt fish feed mixer to get the best mixing result.
c. Extrusion by dry type fish feed extruder: in the dry type extruder, feedstuff is subject to mixing in high temperature before being forced through a die mould. Dry type feed extruder is favored by many fish farmers in Bangladesh.
d.Drying: to remove pellet moisture by fish pellet dryer for next pellet package. For small scale pellet production, you can dry these pellets naturally in the sun.
e.Pellet packing: to automatically pack pellets by packing machine for storage. You can also do this by manpower for small scale production.

V. Current Situation of Feed Pellet Production in Bangladesh
Feed pellet production in Bangladesh is not mature now. Many factories manufacture aquatic feed ddepending on procedures of poultry feed pellet production: proportioning ingredients, grinding, blending and pelleting. Due to unqualified crushing fineness and no valid binder, feed pellets are characterized by the poor digestibility and bad stability in the water. And there are a number of weakness and threats confronted: the volatile political situation, lack of knowledge on raw material quality, feed formulation, machine operation and selection.
However there is always a solution. we has years’ experience of fish feed machines developing and designing, the expert in manufacturing and supplying high-quality fish feed production equipment with rational prices. Moreover, detailed analysis of raw materials, fish feed formulation and professional machine selection and operation are also available. Given a growing population with rising incomes and strong cultural preferences for fish consumption, cooperation with us will significantly contribute to beneficial feed pellet business in Bangladesh!

Related Reading:
Aquatic feed extruder in India