Our first question was about nutrition.
MEVLİ’s R&D story began with Dr. Ercan Mevliyaoğulları’s idea to develop feed for canaries and other cage birds. A subject he had explored in his undergraduate thesis became the focus of the company’s first research and product development work in 2015. The starting point was a product intended for the nutritional needs of a particular group of animals.
This work brought our academic experience into product development. We completed the research in 2016 under our founder’s leadership. Bird nutrition remained a common thread in the research that followed, as we explored different ingredients and production methods.
Turning a mixture into a product that can be made.
After the first project, we approached bird food through material structure as well as ingredients. Work on modified zein suspensions and egg-based foods brought product development using different protein sources together with pilot production infrastructure.
The scope extended beyond preparing a mixture. It included establishing a pilot facility in which the approach could be taken into a production setting. Considering formulation and production infrastructure within the same project placed the transition from research to practice at the centre of the work.
Our work from 2017 to 2019 developed MEVLİ’s approach to studying formulation alongside pilot production. Research on zein suspensions and egg-based bird foods also featured in our founder’s subsequent scientific publications.
Looking at a resource again.
Our next project explored the use of cafeteria leftovers in dog food production. Converting the material into a different product required attention to its behaviour during processing. The research considered both the resource itself and the production method applied to it.
We investigated sequential wet milling to modify the material’s rheological properties—how it flows and deforms. This was combined with process development aimed at converting the material into dog food through extrusion. The idea of reuse was examined through the perspectives of material properties and feed technology.
Completed during 2021–2023, this work forms part of MEVLİ’s research experience connecting the reuse of food resources with feed processing technologies.
Taking the knowledge to another species.
Our work in bird nutrition and processing technologies came together in a project for racing and show pigeons. The aim was to develop a domestic alternative to imported feeds and to assess extrusion as part of product development for this group of birds.
We developed a process for producing extruded feed using undersize raw materials, considering ingredient properties, processing methods and product structure together. Pigeon nutrition and the physicochemical characterisation of feeds also feature in our founder’s scientific research.
With this work completed during 2024–2025, our research journey expanded from canaries and cage birds to feed technologies for pigeons.