BF Spa: Inauguration of the new facilities of the company l'Erba del Persico

The inauguration of the new industrial plants of the company Erba del Persico was held a few days ago. Thanks to the important investments in modern machinery for the dehydration of alfalfa, the company is a candidate to become one of the most important players in the national and international forage sector.

The event was attended by Stefano Bonaccini, President of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Alessio Mammi, Councillor for Agriculture of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Dario Bernardi, Mayor of Portomaggiore, Enzo Gesmundo Secretary General Coldiretti, Paolo Bruni and Tiziano Migiani, President and Managing Director of L'Erba del Persico, Federico Vecchioni, Managing Director BF Spa and Mauro Saltarelli Gruppo Saltarelli - Migiani.

Following the entry into the company perimeter of the BF Spa Group in partnership with the Saltarelli - Migiani Group, the company L'Erba del Persico (together with the farm Terre del Persico with its 2000 hectares of UAA) has identified new strategies and new industrial objectives that, through investments in high-tech machinery and production capacity and the construction of new industrial spaces within the site, redefine the company's role in the national agro-industrial chessboard.

The new plant has two integrated processing:

• a dedicated line for grinding and palletising the fodder. These machines create a kind of flour that is then compacted for transport;

• a line dedicated to the dehydration of alfalfa that is no longer ground, but directly long-fibre.

While the first production line processes a product delivered by farmers to Erba del Persico regardless of the timing of the harvest, the second line processes a ‘fresh’ product just harvested from the land managed by the Terre del Persico farm. The aim of this processing is to create a new product, different from the previous one, with greater added value thanks to the use of a freshly harvested product selected and traced, which is dehydrated, through drying phases, bringing its moisture content to around 10 - 14%, and then compacted into high-density parallelepipeds suitable both for transport and for the quality (of product and format) required by the world market.

The plant is technologically advanced, respects the highest standards of environmental sustainability and safety at work, and will bring the production capacity, once fully operational, to 800 thousand quintals/year, doubling the current one (of about 400 thousand quintals/year).

While the new plant makes it possible to produce an excellent product that responds to the demands of the world livestock market, the investments carried out by L'Erba del Persico also respond to the needs of national farmers, with particular attention to farms operating in hilly areas, which see alfalfa as an opportunity to make crop rotation economically advantageous. Lucerne, in fact, thanks to its characteristics is the queen plant for rotations. In addition to being fundamental for giving the land the right amount of nitrogen in a natural and sustainable way, it is also very important for feeding cattle, especially dairy cattle.

Erba del Persico thus becomes one of the most important national players in terms of quality standards and production capacity in the animal feed supply chain, creating a link between alfalfa suppliers and the world's farms, particularly those in Europe, China, Arab countries and South Korea.

‘As shareholders of the company l'Erba del Persico, we are very happy to see this new production plant built and ready to go, the result of investments designed to help strengthen the national agricultural entrepreneurial fabric through a project that sees internationalisation as a natural outlet,’ said Federico Vecchioni, CEO of BF Spa, who added - BF spa will continue as it has always done, as the leading national operator in agribusiness, to create, together with leading Italian companies such as, in this case, the Saltarelli - Migiani Group, projects that have positive economic and social repercussions in the territories where it operates at a time of great national and international challenges’.