Cooperl Arc Atlantique: The European pig specialist

 

 

 

Two employees – that is what Cooperl Arc Atlantique started with, back in 1966. At that time, the French pork and meat giant was only a small cooperative, consisting of 24 members.

 

The cooperative’s present-day success is easily summarised by looking at the current number of members: 3,600 members – of which 2,700 are pig producers. Together, they produced 5,800,000 pigs in 2010, making Cooperl Arc Atlantique, headquartered in Lamballe, Brittany, France’s largest pig producer, and number four in Europe.Growth is what is anticipated for the years to come. Anne-Marie Boullier, the company’s head of communication, explains: “A successful generation change happened recently, with a new general director who arrived in 2008 and a renewed executive committee consisting of young people.” Under Emmanuel Commault, general manager, eight directors have been put in charge of different specialised branches: animal nutrition, pig production, meat industry, salting industry, butchery delicatessen, bovine industry, specialised distribution and environment business. Several businesses will be discussed in detail below.

 

Cooperl’s production group consists of 2,700 farmers, organised in nine geographical areas each having its own technical team. The cooperative employs a total of 42 breeding technicians, 17 building technicians and 22 veterinarians, in order to be as close as possible to its members.

 

Most members are family farmers with an average of 200 sows. “Some larger farms are now starting up having 1,000 to 1,500 sows,” says Pierre Le Guilloux, director of specialised distribution. In 1994, Cooperl joined forces with another group of producers to create Nucleus, nowadays the leading French pig genetic scheme. Owing to this scheme, Cooperl’s pig farmers nowadays have better technical and economical results compared to the average farm results achieved in Brittany, France’s main livestock rearing area.

 

A comparative study made in 2009 by independent organisations (CER, EDE) proved this – Cooperl producers have a better gross margin per sow (€953) compared to those who are not in the cooperative (€718); for more figures, see Table 1.

 

 

This margin difference is created for 40% by lower feed costs, for 21% by the selling price of the finishing pigs, and for 26% by sow productivity (see Table 2). Nowadays, around 10% of the Cooperl farms reach over 29 finished pigs per sow, while 85% of the its pig farms regularly have a feed conversion ratio which is below 3.0, with 10% even being close to 2.60.

 

 

 

The specialised distribution branch of Cooperl Arc Atlantique has several core functions. One of them is supplying livestock and equipment materials, using eight stores spread out in various places all over Brittany. Le Guilloux explains, “We started only with pig equipment and we have widened our range of products to non-member customers.” He says that a new logistic platform of 5,000 m2 will be built by 2012 in Plestan, Brittany, in order to be able to deliver goods to any customer, all over France.

 

Another core business of the this Cooperl branch is Research and Development, particularly in livestock building construction. Up until now, Cooperl members have been testing innovative buildings – and at the moment even a whole experimental farm is being studied, not having a slurry storage facility. The principle here is to separate the liquid from the solid manure as quickly as possible. This building consists of four independent rooms and phase separation is integrated into the building thanks to a bottom floor having a ‘V’ shape and a slope of 1.5%. The target is to trap 90% of the phosphorus and 55% of nitrogen, while reducing ammonia emmissions by 54%.

 

Le Guilloux says, “We have been working on such a building for two years and the first building has been launched successfully very recently near Vitré. Cooperl’s target is to build a series of four buildings for the upcoming Space (13-16 September) to promote this innovation during the exhibition.The third activity of the specialised distribution sector of Cooperl Arc Atlantique is to promote its know-how abroad. “We provide global expertise to pig farmers who need permanent improvements,” says Le Guilloux. The main targets for promoting the group’s know-how would be Eastern Europe and China. Le Guilloux believes that innovations will be the key to enter new markets. “Our group offers several experts under the same roof,” he adds.

 

Presided by Jean-Michel Mauboussin, the meat industry branch of Cooperl composes of three slaughterhouses: one in Lamballe with 45,000 pigs slaughtered per week; another located in Montfort, with 35,000 pigs slaughtered per week, and the last in Saint-Maixent in Poitou-Charentes region, with 20,000 pigs per week. In addition, there are two processing units: Rochetoirin, in Rhône-Alpes region, and La Verrie ‘Meat Services’ located in Pays de Loire, specialised in slicing, packaging and freezing of meat. This last location can process any raw material (fresh, frozen) from any species (pork, beef, veal, poultry, mutton or goat meat) and can do any custom cuts or à la carte packagings.

 

Lamballe is France’s largest slaughtering and cutting plant, employing a total of 1,300 people (permanent and interim). The facility deals with 45,000 to 47,000 pigs per week, at a speed of 650 pigs per hour. “We have invested a lot to reduce the difficult work and mechanise a lot,” says Mauboussin. After an individual classification, official marking by the external company Uniporc and a quick refrigeration of five hours, the half-carcasses are first of all cut into loins, shoulders or hams. “Only for loins, we have 150 destinations,” says Mauboussin.Six deboning lines are dedicated to loin for supermarkets; exports; breasts (two lines); shoulders and hams. An impressive storage consisting of 9,000 trays of cut product is distributed in four rows and managed by two robots per row, kept at a standard temperature of between 0 and 2°C. About 10% of the cut products is then further processed into e.g. pâtés, cooked roasts, lardons, etc.

 

What are the advantages of the Lamballe site? “The main plus is the volume and the capacity of the slaughterhouse which allow us to better sort the carcasses,” says Mauboussin. He adds that another advantage is that everything is under the same roof, with no break in the cold chain. With the supermarket orders centralised in Lamballe, there is a real complementarity between the three slaughterhouses. This complementarity also exists among the six salting units, representing a total production of 70,000 tonnes per year (see Table 2).