ISSUE FOCUS FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2026 29 Controlling water in animal feed production processes is no longer just a quality issue, but a strategic lever for efficiency, consistency, and profitability. As feed mills handle increasingly variable raw materials, precise moisture control enables producers to stabilize operations, optimize additive dosing, and improve pellet quality. By integrating real-time moisture measurement across key production stages, feed manufacturers can reduce waste, lower energy consumption, and unlock higher-value output from every batch. The world is becoming more integrated digitally, and this allows a lot more information to be both produced and consumed in industrial environments, including in modern production process plants. One of the big challenges for feed producers is to get consistency into their production so that they can optimise the plant and get the same results for each batch. Addressing this challenge offers unique opportunities to stabilise production processes and improve repeatability and profitability. This article will explain how modern moisture sensors can be used to get the best yields and quality from the naturally varying raw materials in a typical feed mill. Benefits of moisture control: • Optimise dosing of feed additives, • Improve nutritional consistency, • Reduce spoilage and waste, • Improve shelf life, • Optimise pellet durability, • Increase plant efficiency, • Reduce process downtime. THE FEED PROCESS Animal feed is produced from a wide range of raw materials which are sourced from natural environments, and the vast quantity of those materials are delivered in bulk loads with wide variation in the moisture content. 1. During delivery, if the materials are being stored, then there are options on how any residual moisture is managed. Some feed producers will add an anti-microbial agent during the intake process to allow them to accept storage at higher moisture levels, whilst some will dry the grain to allow a longer storage life. HIGHER QUALITY AND MORE VALUABLE FEED WITH MOISTURE CONTROL Neal Cass Sales Director Hydronix Ltd
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUxNjkxNQ==