Alfa Laval, a global leader in heat transfer, separation and fluid handling solutions, has reinforced its long-standing partnership with GA Petfoods to support the production of world-class pet food.
Family-run GA Petfoods, situated in Lancashire, is well-known for its recipes that use the highest amounts of fresh meat and fish in the business and provides private-label pet food to hundreds of partners worldwide. The partnership with Alfa Laval, which started over ten years ago, is still crucial to increasing production efficiency and optimising the use of fresh meat.
GA Petfoods’ Head of Design, Scott Morley, emphasised how pet owners’ evolving expectations are driving this innovation. “What we’re doing at GA Petfoods is driven by increasingly conscious pet owners across the world,” he said. Morley added that pet owners now expect the same standards for their companions’ food as for their own. “This is something that we have been pushing the boundaries of for many years, and Alfa Laval’s kit has been central to taking this as far as we possibly can to extract every drop of value from our feedstocks.”
GA Petfoods expertly prepares excellent raw materials, such Aberdeen Angus beef and Scottish salmon, at precisely 82°C using locally sourced resources from reliable farms and fishermen, helping to preserve protein content and flavour.
An Alfa Laval OilPlus decanter allows for exact control over taste and nutritional content by separating oil from the meat slurry after cooking. After entering an AlfaFlash plate flash evaporator, the slurry’s moisture content is reduced from 90% to 50% prior to extrusion, greatly increasing process efficiency. An Alfa Laval high-speed separator is utilised to further purify the separated oil, creating human-grade oil that is used to coat the finished kibble and improve its palatability.
GA Petfoods is a standard for the pet food manufacturing sector, according to Dan Tasker, Account Manager at Alfa Laval’s Food & Water Division. He emphasised that the company is a favoured partner for private-label brands worldwide due to its expertise in incorporating fresh meat and enhancing nutritional value. Tasker remarked, “It is our pleasure to support GA Petfoods in the production of the world’s finest pet food, and I hope that other manufacturers look at this collaboration with a view to emulating its success”