By Arjun Ganesan

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As we look ahead to all that 2024 may bring, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the past 12 months – Ancera at 10 years old is still very much in a phase of early but strong growth. The many first milestones we reached in 2023 are a snapshot of how pivotal of a year it was for our team and the wider industry.

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Perhaps one of the biggest areas of focus this year for the industry came from the USDA, which has a goal to minimize salmonella outbreaks in a significant way by 2030 – a 25% reduction in illnesses. With that, modern technology across the food supply chain is necessary to ensure food suppliers can afford to keep up with the latest safety monitoring and to protect Americans’ health and their companies’ bottom lines. Ancera is proud to support the poultry industry in that effort, along with bringing other critical real-time monitoring tools to the market ahead of other federal goals and regulations. 

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On top of this, we’ve developed some truly groundbreaking new technologies this year to fortify the safety, security, and profitability of the industry. With several critical new assays paired with data science models, poultry producers have more tools than ever – at a faster pace than the industry has seen – to keep flocks healthy and consumers safe.

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Here’s a recap of the Ancera team’s accomplishments this year and how they can help integrators and allied companies alike increase profitability and safety, while decreasing risks and costs:

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Ancera Goes to Market with its Coccidia System Monitoring Product

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• After 10 field trials across US complexes, we launched our product and have since monitored more than 150 million birds
• Our first customers are getting new, objective visibility into their productivity - which can be used to prevent adverse events, optimize feed and control program costs, and manage poultry operations with new levels of precision.
  
  

Salmonella System Monitoring Launches Ahead of New USDA Regulatory Updates

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• Our Beta program launch quickly signed customers to use deep serotyping to track the prevalence of different salmonella strains among breeder flocks in live operations
• Launched ahead of the USDA regulatory updates, this enables poultry producers to go beyond traditional diagnostics and understand their serotype prevalence, traceability, and interventional efficacy
• By tapping our comprehensive network of mobile surveillance systems, CRISPR databases, epidemiological models, and software warning systems, we’re helping the U.S. poultry industry simultaneously reduce risk and improve margins.
  
  

Ancera Launches the Next Generation of PIPER Automated Workbenches

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• PIPER has been and for the foreseeable future, will continue to be the cornerstone of Ancera’s digital command center for the food supply chain. Our next-generation PIPER is a significant upgrade to our core workbench system, detecting cells with an entirely new level of resolution, speed, and granularity
• It is the only platform capable of combining the best of classical and molecular biology, combining in-situ hybridization, targeting single SNP resolution, while imaging whole cells for viability and true enumeration. And it works for bacteria and parasites across a wide variety of complex samples, with high loads of mesophilic and psychotropic organisms  starting with feces!
• This upgrade will allow customers to continue to access data with operationally relevant time-to-results, and unlock new sets of assays compatible with the PIPER device - we look forward to sharing these with the market in early 2024!

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Allied Customers Look to Ancera to Differentiate, Quantify Product Efficacy

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• Our work with an initial set of Allied customers has highlighted a critical market need for Ancera. Vendors are seeking new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors with novel products
• Ancera’s proprietary instruments and software capabilities are proving critical to run cost-effective trials with real-world evidence, track the efficacy of Allied products, and service customers with data-driven insights for a variety of antimicrobials, feed additives, vaccines and more

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Software Analytics Augments Traditional Diagnostic Data

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• In October 2023, Ancera’s products came to life with its first Saas web interface
• We are transcending the era of traditional diagnostics, with advanced software capabilities and simple, and intuitive workflows
• Customers now have access to dynamic data visualization, geospatial analytics, alerts and notifications, collaboration tools, and trend analyses - all while maintaining best-in-class security and privacy standards

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New Leadership, New Innovation in 2024

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• We’re excited that we recently hired Troy Hatlevig as our new VP of Product, to help us accelerate our software product development as we bring on new customers and build new applications that are highly requested by the industry. Troy was previously Head of Global Supply Chain Product for Wayfair and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to us during our rapid growth.
• We expect Ancera to operate at a new level of customer-centricity as we solve some of their hardest challenges. If you're a natural problem solver and interested in joining a rocket ship of growth, we’d love to hear from you!

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As I quoted LBJ in my blog post earlier this year, “I don’t know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.” We have collected and analyzed more of the former than ever before. As a byproduct, we hope the world can safely and affordably enjoy more of the latter.

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I anticipate that next year’s product and customer growth will rapidly eclipse our 2023 progress. Thank you to our partners for trusting us to work on your biggest challenges and to the Ancera team for continuing to deliver and innovate. We will continue to support poultry producers to improve their profits, keep their flocks healthy, and consumers safe. Stay tuned for new innovations and announcements in the new year.