Enhance productivity and quality results in total fat determination

De Heus Animal Nutrition has more than 90 production locations in more than 20 countries. Customers are small and large livestock farmers, integrations and traders. The feed products must always have the same high nutritional quality. This requires constant control of compound feeds, raw materials and concentrates of animal feed in local labs according to quality regulations and standards. Rowan Bosch, laboratory manager in the Netherlands at De Heus Animal Nutrition, now relies on microwave sample preparation for his lab.

Fat determination in food and feed matrices is a routine analysis for the Dutch laboratory, which performed this procedure with the classical Soxhlet method. The process is based on an outdated, cumbersome, labor-intensive and matrix-dependent method that can process no more than 15 samples per day. This approach limits the lab’s efficiency and productivity, thus impacting the overall production process too.
Moreover, the Soxhlet method undergoes a multi-step process, that includes long hydrolysis and extraction procedures, which imply elevated acid and solvent volumes.
Morever, De Heus had some underestimation difficulties in analyzing specific matrices, such as powder-like products in which bound fat is determined, due to the technique’s limitations.

De Heus decided to send its most difficult samples as a test to Milestone’s facilities. The first results that came back even exceeded their expectations, so they moved forward with the investment.
This new method has allowed De Heus to replace all the previous methods of total fat determination and to standardize the use of a single method in all of their samples, both for raw materials and final products.
Moreover, in the ETHOS X, hydrolysis and extraction are carried out in a single step and more rapidly, ensuring a higher productivity and a better workflow. Bosch also underlines that, besides the fact that the results were very good, there are many other advantages:

• 25% chemical consumption and waste disposal.
• Lower energy costs.
• Reduced handling and operational time.

Last but not least, samples prepared with the ETHOS X are also used to calibrate the Near-Infra Red (NIR) system.
The initial implementation has been very easy and smooth and its validation only takes 2 weeks’ time.