A team of Arbor Acres international colleagues from around the globe were present to contribute with presentations and know how together with some guest speakers who were invited to bring their expertise to the meeting program.

^{AACST Group on Table mountain, Feb 2016, Cape Town}

Arbor Acres have a long history in knowledge transfer and are responsible for starting the original poultry production management school over 60 years ago. The deeply held belief that ‘knowledge has no value unless you share it’ was very evident in this 4 day customer service team meeting.

The comprehensive agenda encompassed a range of subjects relating to Arbor Acres. Topics included a review of Arbor Acres today and what is required tomorrow to keep it at the forefront of industry, the genetic progress achieved and projected, a sales motivation speaker challenging attendees by asking, “is your passion contagious?” The day closed with a market research analysis on the world meat market, avian influenza status and compartmentalization and maintaining chick quality.

^{AACST Award Ceremony 2, Feb 2016, Cape Town}

Day two offered international updates on Arbor Acres from 3 commercial managers, an introduction of Aviagen South Africa along with an analysis of Middle East, Africa meat markets. The program addressed a new trend in the industry, modern LED lighting for poultry houses and concluded with the marketing strategy for Arbor Acres. The afternoon involved a trip to Robben Island to experience some of the history of the host country.

Three of the major country presentations, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria were then delivered prior to a management review entitled ‘maintaining persistency of production.’ This was followed by a further two countries, Algeria and South Africa covering key market performance parameters and trends for the future. The remaining meeting focus shifted and addressed the topic of ‘feeding the modern Arbor Acres broiler’ and the session was concluded with an interactive marketing workshop engaging attendees in the challenge of advising Arbor Acres what is required to succeed in the future.

The final day involved bird management and embraced subjects like benchmarking, male management, best practices for brooding, egg handling from farm to setter, bio-security, and feeding the modern Arbor Acres broiler. The traditional close incorporated a summary of the key take home messages from the four day event to further promote the value of the meeting.

“A meeting like this one has a number of important objectives and with the help of the feedback and interaction from the customers it has managed to progress and attract them back now for the 10th year. In the end their opinion of the value of the meeting and of the exchanges with each other will always be the main motivation for future events. We will save no effort to bring novelty, creativity and a commitment to keep pace with future global industry developments in our upcoming events,” commented Puzant Dakessian, international commercial manager, Arbor Acres, Middle East and Africa.