What are your best-known solutions/products/services?

Boehringer Ingelheim India offers a comprehensive range of vaccines and delivery systems that deliver quality protection against diverse poultry health challenges. These include vaccines against Marek’s disease, infectious bursal disease, Newcastle disease, infectious bronchitis, Infectious Coryza and many more. Some of our leading products include – Vaxxitek HVT IBD, Marek HVT SB1, BDA Blen, Avinew and Volvac Range of Killed Vaccines.

Which industry sectors are your customers in, and which ones are growing fastest?

Boehringer Ingelheim India’s customer segments include broiler and layer producers, integrators, breeding companies and hatcheries. Broiler integrators and hatcheries are considered the fastest growing customer segments for the poultry sector, on account of the growing consumption patterns and subsequent demand for their services. In addition to the poultry and companion animals markets we serve in India, globally we also operate in ruminant and swine segments.

What are your most recent product innovations?

Boehringer Ingelheim’s product innovation in animal health have yielded meaningful preventive therapies for livestock and companion animals across the world. In the poultry business, our most recent product innovations include introduction of third generation vectored technology vaccines for protection against Infectious Bursal Disease and Newcastle Disease, supported with veterinary expertise and efficient vaccine delivery systems designed for the hatcheries.

In terms of innovation in poultry on a global level, we received marketing authorization in the US for VAXXITEK® HVT+IBD+ILT, the first vaccine to offer protection in one shot from Infectious Laryngotracheitis, Marek’s Disease and Infectious Bursal Disease. 

What are the major trends and developments affecting your category and your customers, and how are you responding?

While on the consumer side, there is increasing awareness on animal welfare, food safety and antibiotic resistance related issues, on the poultry production side, there is some consolidation expected in the broiler industry. Key poultry producers are scaling up to large automated hatcheries and production systems, with an encouragingly increasing focus on vaccines supported by efficient vaccine delivery mechanisms.

Boehringer Ingelheim India has been a value partner to our key customers, helping them address key challenges across the poultry value chain with our innovative vaccines aimed at both hatchery and farm vaccination. This has been offering better protection against important poultry diseases. In addition, we have been supporting them with our veterinary and lab consulting services to counter emerging and re-emerging health issues and enable them improve production efficiency.

In addition, Boehringer Ingelheim is a science-driven company, and strives to continuously innovate to respond to the industry trends, challenges and opportunities by accelerating its innovative efforts, either through in-house research and development and/or external partnering. 

What’s your strategy for succeeding in the current climate?

Boehringer Ingelheim India has believed in the power of partnering with customers and in enabling an ecosystem of quality poultry availability in the country. We believe that it is essential for all the different segments of the value chain to communicate, not only to manage challenges of today and tomorrow, but also to leverage some of the inherent strengths and opportunities that the industry presents, with growing consumer demand. On a global level and as part of our COVID-19 response, we have been putting a great emphasis on health and safety of our employees, customers and communities.     

Can you tell us about any of recent customer contracts and how you helped the customer meet their challenges?

Boehringer Ingelheim India’s holistic services help our customers design effective disease control programs, training and development of their teams on efficient vaccination protocols and improving the production performance of their poultry flocks through our innovative products and services.

Could you please share your views on Poultry Industry for our magazine readers?

Poultry is one of the fastest growing segments of the agricultural sector in India and is valued at $17 bn. India is currently the third largest egg producer at 105 bn eggs per annum and fifth largest poultry meat producer at 4.5 million metric tons per annum. Per capita consumption of chicken and eggs is still low in India compared to developed countries and many other developing markets. Though the live bird market still constitutes over 90% of total broiler business, the share of dressed and processed chicken is increasing by double digits every year and online meat sales have grown by 2-3 times in last two years. This presents a great opportunity for poultry producers to introduce new marketing and distribution channels to be able to meet the increasing demand of good quality affordable source of protein such as chicken and eggs. Disease challenges, lack of cold storage infrastructure and processing facilities, increasing feed prices and volatility in broiler prices remain a key concern for the poultry producers.