origin and business profile

Industrial Técnica Pecuaria, S.A. (ITPSA), established in 1968 as an entirely Spanish company, was born not only out of the need to commercialize its products but with the desire to offer a wide and specialized technical assistance in the field of animal nutrition. With time and due to the constantly increasing technical sophistication of the sector at which ITPSA aimed its efforts, the advisory activity has slowly declined but it has left a definite and characteristic imprint on the company's profile and activities.

Other than its own products, developed as a result of ITPSA's own research, new products have been added to ITPSA's rapidly widening catalogue. Focused on basic and natural products, aimed at stimulating animal production, agreements for the distribution of other products have been reached, whenever products of outstanding characteristics and quality were available.

Since 1980 ITPSA has been expanding its marketing activities into foreign countries, reaching significant levels of sales (well over 65% of total production) and technical service and appreciation in over 40 different countries worldwide. ITPSA has been recently awarded public recognition of leadership in export business in the field of animal nutrition supplements. It is also significant to outline that ITPSA holds an ISO 9002 certification, which reinforces reliability ofITPSA products and standards of high international qualities.

The company accounts for a staff of 45 employees, many of which (31%) hold advanced university degrees, in the fields of veterinary science, nutrition, biology, agronomy and fine chemistry. Main offices are located in Barcelona and plant and research units in the industrial area of Valls, near Tarragona, at a bare five minutes from the intersection of the Barcelona-Tarragona-Madrid highways.

Industrial Técnica Pecuaria, S.A. began its marketing pathway by offering Marigold (Tagetes erecta) meal as a natural pigmenter (lutein) for poultry production. A second and natural step was the introduction of high quality paprika powder, as a source of natural red (capsantine) pigments to complement the yellow and give the desired orange hue to poultry products. The high technological development of these type of products through the years (extraction, saponification, isomerization, etc.) has given these pigment sources a dimension and personality far from the simple flower or paprika meals.

Shortly thereafter, in 1970, ITPSA added to its catalogue a new line of antioxidants, mostly based on ethoxyquin, which have evolved into one of today's most modern facilities for the production of ethoxyquin and formulated antioxidants for the feed industry in Europe.

As time went by and ITPSA's growth continued, new product lines were added as a result of research applied to the needs of the animal feed business. Amongst these, acidulants (in 1975) for piglets, calves and rabbits, with an important group based on inorganic acidifiers; mold inhibitors (in 1980), and, shortly thereafter, a whole set of products designed to improve the quality of animal products.

In 1992 Industrial Técnica Pecuaria introduced in the market its new set of products based in digestive enzymes (b-glucanase and xilanase based) to be followed by a-galactosidase based enzymes (1997), in combination with other type of enzymes, such as proteases, amylases and cellulases, leading to different type enzyme preparations aimed at solving feeding and physiological deficiencies in our production animals, mostly in the line of poultry production, followed closely by swine and rabbit production.