Halamid

Halamid® Proves Equipment Friendly!

Corrosion is a significant problem with aggressive disinfectants, in particular acidic Peroxygen – Persulfate types. Users find that prolonged use of peroxygen-based disinfectants can result quite quickly in corroded, tarnished and degraded metal equipment in the poultry barn (feeders, fans) and around aquacultural premises (pumps, pipes, grilles). Corroded spraying equipment is another common complaint.

Toby Heppenstall, General Manager at France-based Axcentive sarl, producers of Halamid® explains the background to some recent testing.

“Halamid® is well known to be mild to materials and equipment but our distribution network told us that they needed something more visual than a table of data to make this point with new prospective users.”

Arno Schut, Technical Manager, continues the story:

“The difficulty was in finding a suitable experiment protocol which would replicate the wet-dry cycling effect of regular disinfection onto metal surfaces. Curiously we found the best proxy to be the standard test (ASTM 1384) for the corrosiveness of engine coolant formulations upon engine parts. In our lab we replaced engine coolant with Halamid® and other disinfectant active ingredients”.

Six different materials underwent the same number of cycles in the disinfectant solution in an open, aerated refluxing vessel. The disinfectant solutions were changed every day to ensure freshness.
Arno continues: “Weight loss measurements provided quantitative proof that Halamid® resists corrosion best, but the most revealing results for the user are the images of the corroded metal plates!” (See picture)

Clearly different types of disinfectant all have different benefits and drawbacks, but Axcentive hopes that these results will be useful in underlining the advantage of Halamid® in environments where corrosion is a particular problem.

Further information on Halamid® can be obtained from www.axcentive.com, by emailing info@axcentive.com or by calling our sales office on +33 442 694 090.

Ends.

Returning from their third successful year exhibiting the Halamid® brand at VIV Asia (March, in Bangkok Thailand),  France-based Axcentive sarl has every reason to be happy with the results.  Visitor numbers were high, and Axcentive collected dozens of leads for potential new customers and candidate distributors.

Halamid® has been regarded as an essential and reliable product for aquaculture for many years. Its unique formula is designed to be powerful against diseases yet safe to fish, shrimp and aquatic environments. Halamid® is used in salt, brackish and fresh water environments and is the biocide of choice in many fish farms. Its biocidal efficacy towards many micro-organisms in the presence of aquatic animals is widely admired – against EMS, White Spot and Costia in Asian shrimp and tropical species just as it is against gill conditions in North Atlantic salmonids.

Arno Schut, Technical Development Manager at Axcentive, comments

”As always, Viv was a great opportunity to meet and support many of our existing distributors in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as a platform to introduce our brand to new parties.

Arno was closely supported on the stand by Halamid®’s official distributor in the country, Allvet Kaset Center.

So would the Halamid® team change anything about the winning formula?

Arno continues: “Not much! Overall this year was a great success again and the partnership with Kaset makes a strong combination. As there was also a lot of interest in our message for poultry, we will consider a future location in the main hall instead of the Aquatech pavilion”.

Further information on Halamid® can be obtained from www.axcentive.com, by emailing info@axcentive.com or by calling our sales office on +33 442 694 090.

Axcentive will be showcasing the Halamid® brand at VIV Asia from 11‐13 March 2015 in Bangkok Thailand. The Halamid® stand, number C005, is located in the welcome hall of the Aquatech pavilion and will focus mainly on the unique benefits of Halamid® in aquaculture.

Halamid® has been regarded as an essential and reliable product for aquaculture for many years. Its unique formula is designed to be powerful against diseases yet safe to fish, shrimp and aquatic environments. Halamid® is used in salt, brackish and fresh water environments and is the biocide of choice in many fish farms. Its biocidal efficacy towards many micro‐organisms in the presence of aquatic animals is widely admired – against EMS, White Spot and Costia in Asian shrimp and tropical species just as it is against gill conditions in North Atlantic salmonids.

Axcentive will be closely supported on the stand by approved Halamid® distributor Allvet Kaset Center. Mr. Pichai Pitaktrakulsiri, CEO of Kaset Center , will be attending the stand in person.

Discussing the product he comments:

“Our aquaculture industry is in deep problems due to the EMS disease. The shrimp production is again decreasing for the second consecutive year. In two years production has gone down 65 % ! We don’t expect Halamid® alone will counter this trend but its profile meets our needs in order to better protect our aquaculture industry from diseases”

Visitors to the stand who have questions about the usage of Halamid® in poultry will also be welcomed.

Axcentive will take the opportunity at VIV Asia this year to remind the market of the many benefits of Halamid® as well as taking the message to those in the industry who have still not yet discovered the brand!

The Research Cooperation between Balai Budidaya Laut Batam (“BBL Batam”) and Axcentive on the topic of improving hygiene and preventing diseases in tropical fish farming, starts bearing fruit.

Results are showing lower bacterial and viral levels and consequently higher survival and better growth. Initial tests in the larvae hatchery have shown that a small but regular dosage of Halamid® into the rearing water gives a significant better survival for grouper, barramundi and silver pompano.

Larvae survival, both in the wild and in farms, is typically low, much lower than it is in the subsequent nursery and grow‐out stages. The number of eggs required is therefore a multitude of the number of fish harvested. The availability of good quality eggs is often a bottleneck.

Upon using Halamid® the larvae survival rate has multiplied with a factor 5.

These tests also prove that Halamid® can be applied at a dosage that is effective in killing disease‐causing bacteria and viruses, without showing the toxicity symptoms that many other products show at their effective level.

“The results with Halamid® are promising and based on the significance of these initial tests we have already started using Halamid® in our operations as a standard larvae treatment showing good results” says Mr. Tinggal, project leader from the BBL.

Tests are ongoing also in the nursery and for egg washing in order to establish the full merits of a Halamid® protocol in tropical food fish production.

Further information can be obtained from local Halamid distributors or axcentive.com/.

Sometimes, serendipitous meetings result in the most fruitful collaborations.

Early in 2014, France‐based Axcentive got to know Dr Ibrahima Sall, a poultry vet with big ambitions, while he was working on a World‐Bank sponsored project with a breeder farm in Nigeria.

Dr Sall is also managing director of Avivet suarl, a veterinary practise headquartered in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal. Thanks to the CDEAO (a free trade agreement between several West African countries), Avivet’s distribution operation trades across both countries. Following the first tentative conversations about a partnership with Axcentive’s Halamid® brand of poultry disinfectant, Dr Sall quickly secured the necessary import licenses and approvals and has made an impressive start launching the Halamid brand to the region in 2014.

“Most experiences with registrations teach us to be rather pessimistic about launch timetables in new territories – so Avivet’s achievements in West Africa have been a refreshing surprise!” commented Toby Heppenstall, General Manager of Axcentive.

Poultry farmers in Senegal and Nigeria prefer to buy disinfectant in smaller packaging units than is common in Europe due to smaller barn sizes. Halamid’s new 2kg bucket format developed for South East Asian markets, has translated well to Africa.

Dr Sall of Avivet added “The response to Halamid has been fantastic. Farmers with successful operations like to identify with Western brands, production is really becoming more intensive. And it’s a big market here!”

The Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS), also known as Acute Hepatopancreatic Necrosis Syndrome is causing high mortalities in various Southeast Asian shrimp farming countries.

The cause of this disease has been linked to the omnipresent Vibrio parahaemolyticus. However this bacterium alone does not have such disastrous consequences. In fact the toxins produced by a virus that has infected the Vibrio (a phage) cause the mortality of the shrimp.

The phage alone is hard to eradicate, hence the proper approach is to reduce the number of Vibrio p. to a minimum.

Independent tests have shown that Vibrio parahaemolyticus is effectively killed by Halamid®. With the effective Halamid® dose being well under the toxic dose to shrimps, Halamid® offers the best possibility to keep Vibrio parahaemolyticus, under control.
Axcentive is continuing tests at the Thailand Kasetsart University following this approach.

Many biocides do not offer the possibility to control Vibrio in the presence of shrimp or fish due to their toxicity at the effective vibriocidal levels required. Halamid® has a low toxicity and is therefore different.

Halamid® is used on a global scale to protect fish and shrimp from pathogenic microorganisms. It destroys bacteria and virus particles in fish tanks, raceways, ponds and cages without harmful effects to the fish. In the USA the FDA has approved Halamid® Aqua for treatment of salmonids against bacterial gills diseases.

Further information can be obtained from local Halamid distributors or axcentive.com/.

Although outbreaks have been traced to a variety of food types, Salmonella is most often associated with poultry products and is considered a veritable scourge of our industry.

First identified as a human pathogen in the late 19th Century, this successful and aggressive family of bacteria continues to evolve and diversify, to the point where today there are more than 2,000 strains causing significant foodborne disease outbreaks the world over.

Although Halamid has not been tested against all 2,000, it has been proved effective against a large number of Salmonella species, including for example S. typhimurium (the 2nd most common serotype associated with foodborne illness and the third most frequently identified with chicken), S. oranienburg, and S. Dublin.

An example of proven Halamid® performance against the above named Salmonella species is a reduction of more than 5 log10 of the bacterial count in just 2.5 min, a reassuringly rapid performance in a dilution at which Halamid is commonly used in poultry farms.

Test data from our extensive data library on a wide spectrum of different bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is available from Axcentive on request along with test conditions used.

Further information on Halamid® can be obtained from www.axcentive.com, by emailing info@axcentive.com or by calling our sales office on +33 442 694 090.

Ukraine in particular is an important target market for Halamid® which received its national biocide registration in January 2014. Dimitriy Sulima, Managing Director of Halamid® distributor Univet, helped to coordinate the input to the conference and remarked “Now we have the approval and have begun to inform the market, I am very confident about the future prospects for Halamid® in Ukraine”.

Axcentive is proud to announce the imminent award of a New Animal Drug Application (NADA) approval for the use of Halamid® in aquaculture in the USA; such approval to be granted by FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.
All technical sections for this application have been completed and the remaining administrative procedure is expected to take another 2 months. The product will be marketed in the US as Halamid® Aqua and is available in 25 kg drums and 5 kg buckets.

The approval will cover treatment of freshwater reared salmonids, walleye and freshwater-reared warm water finfish; either for bacterial gill disease or external columnaris disease.

A key factor in the success of this project has been the cooperation between many agencies, organizations such as the Federal-State Aquaculture Drug Approval Partnership , the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, the National NADA Coordinator and Axcentive. Either alone or together in project teams, they took care of the generation of efficacy tests, target animal safety data, analytical methodology, product labeling , human food safety data, environmental assessment and safety requirements etc.

Axcentive cooperates with Lab-Vet for the sales and market development of Halamid® in the Polish Livestock industry. Every year this innovative supplier of (mainly) poultry health products and services organizes a well-visited national symposium and workshop for vets and other specialists in the field.

Presentations by representatives of Lab-Vet and their principals gave an update on diseases, their diagnosis, vaccines, toxicology and obviously disinfectants. Axcentive’s Sarah Koehler: ‘We focused on the practical consequences that residual dirt has on the final performance of disinfectants. Halamid® combines the oxidative broad spectrum activity with a good stability in the presence of such organic matter, unlike other oxidative products such as peroxygens and chlorine. This is of course not an excuse for incomplete cleaning but an assurance that the house or equipment in the end will be spick and span! Sarah also stated that in today’s world the use of products posing serious health risks to farmers or contractors is no longer required. Halamid® replaces for example phenolics and formaldehyde in virtually all applications without the risks these products bring along. The symposium was another excellent occasion to come closer to the people who prescribe and/or use Halamid®.