Hikari - the Koi food of championsWhy Hikari Koi food is SO good for your fish..Mark and I both believe in the products that we sell. Else we wouldn't sell them! Whenever we are in Japan on a buying trip recently we stop off at the Hikari head office in Himeji for a chat and a bit of a poke around with the Hikari guys. We are often given a guided tour of their factory and an insight into the company that few have seen. It is amazing to see the lengths that this company goes to to ensure that your Hikari Koi food is the best available Koi food on the market. We're also given a tour of the research facilities which are equally world class and truly impressive. So what's in it for you?Erm, healthier, happier, bigger, brighter, more active Koi? But that's not all, not by a long way... We can confidently say that Hikari are extremely strict about their Koi food. They will not allow any distributor to re-bag their food for fear of contamination. This means that each bag of food that you buy is exactly as it is the day it left the factory. Each bag of Koi food is uniquely tagged and random samples from each batch of Koi food produced are taken, recorded and stored. Should you ever find any contamination in a bag of Hikari Koi food the factory can then trace the batch and assess the likely source of the contamination. This is a company that takes its reputation for quality very, very seriously indeed! The Hikari Koi Food Factory:Inside the factory the feed stock used in the manufacture process is stored on a single day usage basis. In other words the manufacturing stock on hand is only enough for a single day's production with fresh stock arriving every single day. This minimises the risk of contamination by insects, rodents and such like. Outside the factory in the stock storage area you could just about eat off the floor... Getting into the factory is easy enough - you just walk up to the door which is a self sealing high speed roller shutter door that snaps open and shut in the blink of an eye. This stops insects from getting in and out of the sealed factory. And of course it also helps enormously in preventing external contamination... And Hannes and I had to don starched coats with hair nets and we got blasted down by air jets before entering for the same reason... All this just for fish food! Inside the factory the scenes are quite impressive to say the least. There are several production lines and what is of interest is the actual pellet manufacture wherein the feed stocks are evenly mixed and the Hikari ingredients added to it. The product is then pelletised and dried at high temperatures which also cooks the pellet evenly at the same time. The temperature is strictly controlled to keep the vitamins and other nutritionally important compounds intact. The Koi food is then sieved to remove any uneven or odd sized pellets (I kid you not). The food is then bagged, tagged and shipped. And then we went off to go and see the jaw dropping Hikari Research Laboratory...
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