14 students from 11 nations received their diplomas qualifying them as feed technology engineers in the anniversary year of the international Swiss Institute of Feed Technology (SFT).
Anniversary year for the SFT
This year, the SFT is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Since its foundation in 1979, over 400 students from 60 countries have attended its specialist courses for animal feed technology, says the School's director Ernst Nef. The graduation ceremony took place in the Restaurant Eppenberg in Bichwil near Uzwil. Nef handed the students their diplomas individually, each time adding a few personal - usually humorous - remarks
to his official congratulations, which gave the event a friendly touch.
Knowledge of new technologies
Basically, all the students would have deserved an award in view of their fine performance and the successful completion of their studies. But ultimately, one is always the best in class - and this time it was Gino Catacora from Bolivia, who achieved a final mark of 5.6 out of 6. The trained agronomist has been the manager of a feed manufacturing plant in Bolivia for seven years now.
Catacora on what he has learned:
" Safe feed,safe food is an important topic for me, and I have learned a lot of new
things about it at the SFT. It is also important to me to keep abreast of
new technologies, which I was also able to do."
Students from the world over
This year's diploma course was held in English. The students came from North and South America, Africa, and Europe. They all invested a lot of time during the six-month preparatory course and the subsequent nine-week main course at the School's base in Uzwil.
"This class was extremely ambitious to learn new things," says the School's director Ernst Nef. It was therefore not surprising that they were enormously pleased about
completing it successfully. The examination subjects included process engineering, animal feeding and feed science, electrical engineering and automation, and business administration. The focus, however, was on process technology, which accounts for about 60 percent of classes and counts double in the examinations.
Uwe Wehrmann, president of the SFT and head of the Feed Technology business unit at Bühler AG, said he was pleased that feed manufacturers from around the globe were delegating their employees to training courses to learn about the significance of safe food and feed. The international Buhler Technology Group is the partner of the SFT and has been supporting it since its foundation.
Photo: The best in this year’s class of feed technologists was Gino Catacora from Bolivia. The president of the SFT, Uwe Wehrmann, handed him a commemorative plate. From left to right: Uwe Wehrmann (president of SFT), Gino Catacora, Ernst Nef (director of SFT).
