3–4 T/H Basa Fish Feed Extruder Machine in Philippines

The Customer Was Not Trying to Become a General Fish Feed Factory

The plant already sold conventional aquafeed products, but the new investment had one job: establish a repeatable floating pangasius feed program without rebuilding every upstream section of the factory.

That distinction affected the investment. Existing raw-material intake, fine grinding, batching and mixing equipment could remain in service after capacity checks. The customer's thermal drying, cooling and finished-feed handling sections were also reviewed because a fish feed extruder cannot be treated as the last machine in the process.

RICHI's equipment scope centered on the twin-screw extrusion section and its interfaces. The project did not assume that purchasing one extruder alone would turn mixed feed powder directly into bag-ready aquafeed.

A Niche Pangasius Market Changes the Capacity Decision

Philippine aquaculture is large, but pangasius occupies a different market position from milkfish and tilapia. For this processor, that made a 3–4 T/H machine more sensible than a much larger extrusion system designed around mass-market national demand.

The initial commercial target is approximately 6,500 tonnes of floating pangasius feed per year. At 4 T/H, that volume requires about 1,625 effective extrusion hours. At 3 T/H, it requires approximately 2,167 hours.

Across roughly 280 production days, this corresponds to about 5.8–7.7 effective extrusion hours per day. The machine can therefore support a normal commercial schedule while leaving room for cleaning, formulation changes, maintenance and downstream dryer constraints.

The Feed Mash Reaches the Extruder Only After Fine Preparation

Floating aquafeed extrusion is sensitive to the preparation of the mash entering the conditioner and screw section. Major ingredients for this project are ground to approximately 0.5–1.0 mm before batching and mixing. Oversized grain particles or poorly ground fibrous ingredients can interfere with cooking uniformity and finished pellet structure.

The customer may use combinations of cereal or starch ingredients, soybean meal, suitable animal or marine protein sources, rice-derived ingredients, oils, amino acids, minerals and premix. The actual percentages are determined by the nutritionist and raw-material analysis.

The project does not lock the plant into a formula such as 30% soybean meal or 20% rice bran. Ingredient availability in the Philippines changes, and extrusion behavior must be rechecked when starch, protein, fiber or oil characteristics change materially.

The SPHS120×2 Was Matched to the Feed Brief

The SPHS120×2 sits between smaller specialty machines and much larger commercial extrusion systems. For this customer, the important point was not simply that the main motor is 110 kW. The selection had to match annual sales volume, mash preparation capacity, steam supply, dryer capacity and the feed density required after extrusion.

Floating Feed Is Created by a Process Window, Not by the Machine Name

The customer needs floating feed, but installing a twin-screw extruder does not guarantee that every formulation will float automatically. Finished density depends on the interaction between formulation, particle size, moisture, steam conditioning, screw configuration, thermal-mechanical input, die arrangement and post-extrusion drying.

Starch-containing ingredients are particularly important because their behavior during cooking contributes to expansion and structural development. Protein, fiber and oil levels also change extrusion response.

For this reason, RICHI does not promise a fixed floating rate for any formula before material testing and commissioning. The operator establishes a stable process window from the real mash rather than relying on one universal temperature, moisture or screw-speed setting.

The Dryer Is the Capacity Check Many Extruder Buyers Miss

Fresh extrudate leaves the machine warm and with substantially more moisture than a stable packaged fish feed. It must pass through a properly sized drying section before cooling and final handling.

This makes the dryer one of the first pieces of existing equipment RICHI checks when a customer asks to install only an extruder. A 3–4 T/H extruder connected to a downstream dryer that can process only 2 T/H does not create a 3–4 T/H aquafeed system.

The customer's process route is therefore fine grinding → batching → mixing → conditioning → SPHS120×2 extrusion → drying → cooling → screening → oil or liquid coating where required → finished-feed storage and packing.

The extrusion capacity and complete finished-feed capacity are treated separately whenever the downstream thermal system becomes limiting.

Why the Project Uses One 4 mm Commercial Product

The extruder can work with different dies, but this case does not claim that the customer simultaneously produces every fish-feed size from 2 to 6 mm. The first commercial product is approximately 4 mm floating feed for the grow-out stage of pond-raised pangasius.

Keeping one principal specification during launch reduces the number of variables the production team must control. Formula, die configuration, cutting, dryer settings and coating can be stabilized around one product before additional sizes are introduced commercially.

Smaller juvenile feeds would require a separate review of grinding fineness, die and cutter arrangement, drying behavior and feeding characteristics. They are not treated as automatic extensions of this project.

Pangasius Culture in the Philippines Comes with a Location Constraint

The customer serves farms operating controlled freshwater pond systems. This distinction matters because pangasius culture in the Philippines is regulated differently from species commonly stocked in natural inland waters.

The aquafeed producer therefore qualifies its target farms rather than marketing the feed indiscriminately to lake-cage operators. Feed manufacturing does not replace the farmer's responsibility to comply with aquaculture and environmental requirements applicable to pangasius production.

This also makes the customer's market-development approach more focused: a smaller number of compliant commercial farms can be more relevant to the new product than broad national aquaculture statistics.

Why Twin Screw Was Chosen for This Formula Work

The customer's interest in twin-screw extrusion comes from process control rather than a generic claim that twin screw is always better than single screw. The plant expects changes in local ingredient lots and wants greater flexibility when adjusting mechanical and thermal treatment around different mash characteristics.

Twin screws provide positive material conveying and additional opportunities to configure the working sections of the extruder. That can be useful when the processor needs to manage expansion and density across formulations with changing starch, protein and fiber properties.

However, machine configuration still has to be matched to the feed. Screw design, die resistance and conditioning conditions are selected around actual material tests rather than copied from another aquafeed plant.

The Upgrade Also Changes Quality Control

Before commercial batches are released, the processor checks more than pellet appearance. Finished feed is evaluated for dimensions, moisture, bulk density, fines and water behavior according to the plant's product specification.

Nutrition and biological performance are handled separately. The extruder changes the physical and thermal treatment of the formula, but the project does not claim predetermined improvements in growth rate or feed conversion ratio without controlled farm data.

This distinction prevents equipment performance from being confused with fish-performance claims that depend on feed formulation, farming density, water quality, fish health and feeding management.

Equipment Delivery into Luzon

The SPHS120×2 is prepared for export from Qingdao and routed through a major Luzon container gateway before inland delivery to the feed-processing site. The screw elements, gearbox, electrical components and conditioner assemblies receive separate transport protection because alignment and mechanical condition are important during installation.

Before production starts, the engineering review covers foundation and service clearances, 110 kW main-motor load, steam capacity, mash-bin discharge, conditioner interfaces, extruder outlet elevation, dryer intake and downstream conveying.

This interface work is especially important in a standalone-machine project because the extruder has to fit equipment that was not originally installed around the new extrusion capacity.

What RICHI Needs Before Recommending the Same Extruder

A buyer asking for a Basa Fish Feed Extruder Machine in Philippines should provide more than a target tonnes-per-hour figure. The useful engineering brief includes the actual species and growth stage, annual feed demand, pellet diameter, required floating or sinking behavior, formula range, raw-material particle size, existing mixer capacity, steam conditions, dryer evaporation capacity, coating requirements and available electrical load.

For this project, those inputs led to one SPHS120×2 operating at approximately 3–4 T/H, with finely prepared 0.5–1.0 mm mash and an approximately 4 mm floating pangasius feed as the first commercial product. That combination gives the processor enough output for its confirmed specialty market without pretending that pangasius occupies the same position in Philippine aquaculture as tilapia or milkfish.