On 21 May 1971, pig farmer Bert Verbakel set up his business specialising in pig housing equipment. Initially, the work was carried out in a barn next to his house in Nijnsel. However, after seven years, the workshop became too small and the company moved to the industrial estate in Nijnsel (NL), where it is still based today.
Bert soon began to specialise in the development and manufacture of pig feeders because he felt that the existing feeding methods did not meet his requirements as a pig farmer.
In the early 1970s, feed troughs were partly made from asbestos cement and steel, but in the late 1970s Bert became the first manufacturer to switch to the then-unknown recycled plastic sheets that he had come across at the Pig&Poultry agricultural trade fair in England. These sheets were made from fused granules of recycled PE plastic, sourced from agricultural plastic, amongst other things. On average, Verba has been processing 700,000 kilos of recycled plastic per year for 40 years running, meaning that over all those years an enormous quantity of used plastic has been removed from the environment and incorporated into products for the pig farming sector. This is an achievement of which VERBA, but certainly also VERBA’s customers and the pig farming sector, can be proud.
VERBA He was able to cut, drill and thermoform the plastic sheets himself with ease. Thanks to this flexibility and Bert’s, as a pig farmer, keen desire for the perfect feeding trough, the slurry trough was soon developed.
Thanks to the success of this plastic feeding trough – the basic principles and carefully considered dimensions of which can still be found in many current products – the company grew very rapidly and laid a solid foundation. This also gave VERBA the opportunity to tailor its feed troughs even more closely to the needs of the growing pig sector. Feed wastage, for example, has always been a key priority at VERBA. A 1 per cent reduction in feed wastage – which can easily be achieved with a good feeding trough – quickly translates into savings of many thousands of euros a year on feed costs. According to VERBA, a good feed trough is therefore almost always an underestimated but certainly one of the most important – if not the most important – investments in pig housing. After all, a good feed trough prevents unnecessary feed wastage on a daily basis, reduces the amount of feed and water ending up in the slurry pit, promotes the pigs’ growth and makes work easier. The difference between a good feed trough and a less good one is often not immediately apparent, but lies in details such as a smooth finish, sealed anti-spill edges, proper adjustment and the use of high-quality materials.
50 years later, founder Bert Verbakel is still the owner of the family business VERBA, and the production of over 200 different types and sizes of feeding troughs, piglet nests and heating plates still takes place at the company’s own factory in the Netherlands. This ensures that high quality and fast delivery times are maintained. For over five years now, the day-to-day management of VERBA has been in the hands of Jeroen Gloudemans, Bert’s nephew, who learnt all the ins and outs of feed troughs from Bert.
VERBA is still renowned today for its high-quality pig feeders, which are very well designed and supplied worldwide. By ‘high quality’, VERBA means durability, animal welfare, hygiene, ease of use and excellent feed conversion. These are requirements that all VERBA products meet.
