The Nutrifeed story is a story of farmers, young animals, partnerships, research, and vision. A vision on animal nutrition and ingredients. A story that begins in the 1920s with De Meijerij Veghel, a dairy cooperative in the south of the Netherlands.

Nutrifeed is now a global company in high-quality nutrition for young animals. Every day, more than millions of calves, piglets, lambs, and goats are provided with high-quality, often circular, feed under the brands Kalvolac, Porcolac, Halmalac, and Chivalac. But how did this company from Veghel grow to become a global player?

In 1926, six dairy producers from the Meijerij region in North Brabant decided to set up a cooperative in Veghel under the name “Cooperative Central Milk Products Factory De Meijerij”. This cooperative grew into a leading dairy cooperative in the region. The cooperation continued to grow, as did the knowledge of animals, their care, and feeding.

In 1969, after a merger, the name was changed to “De Zuid-Nederlandse Melkindustrie (DMV)”. Ten years later (1979) DMV, popularly known as ‘De Melkindustrie’, merged with Campina to become DMV-Campina. The DMV-Campina production site in Veghel was renamed DMV International in 1992.

Innovative legislation made it necessary to separate production sites for food for humans and food for animals. Therefore, a new factory site for the production of animal feed came into operation in 1985 in Veghel, the Netherlands. The calf milk replacer (KMV) division was accommodated at the new location. Piet van Dijk, then managing director, was the first director of this KM division.

This division grew bigger and bigger, and increasingly had its own identity and need for independence. In this flow (in 1990) the idea arose to develop an own company name, which became the name NUTRIFEED.

Research occupies an important place

Nutrifeed continued to develop. It had its own logistics and R&D department. This department had its own research stable at Egelmeer in Zijtaart, close to the factory site in Veghel. This enabled the R&D department to carry out a large number of studies, an important step in the development of high-quality animal nutrition. In addition, there was a lot of cooperation with farmers in the area, so that research could be carried out in several environments.

Quality above all

Also back then, delivering quality was a priority for the Nutrifeed team. Experience and knowledge were gained by keeping breeding calves, and veal calves and cooperating with contract farms (for veal calves).

Due to the merger in 2009 between Friesland Foods and Campina, the name was changed to FrieslandCampina. Campina was active in the south of the country (the name Campina comes from the North Brabant region of Kampina!) and Friesland Foods (Friesland is a province in the North of the Netherlands) was active in the north of the Netherlands. Until then Nutrifeed was part of Campina. Due to this merger, Nutrifeed became part of FrieslandCampina.