Hanley International bridges global innovation with local livestock solutions

27 July 2026

7 minute read

By: Sarah Mikesell

North America

Asia

Dr. Yulin Ma, president and founder at Hanley International, and Kevin Strecker, key account manager at Hanley International, recently spoke to Global Ag Media’s Sarah Mikesell at Hanley’s warehouse in Findlay, Ohio, USA, about how Hanley International started, their product offering and how they do business. 

Yulin, tell us the founding story behind Hanley International? 

I came to the US about 20 years ago from China to study my PhD at the University of Kentucky. After I finished, I joined Novus International as a researcher, and I was in technical service for almost eight years. But I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit which is why I went on to get my MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. 

During my time working, I was amazed by the fact that about 70-80% of premix feed components actually come from Asia. An idea was born and I thought, “Why can’t I use my background as a bridge to connect the people from the other side of the world to bring affordable products here?” That's how Hanley International was born.

Han-Ley means sea and neighbor in Chinese. If you have a good friend, distance doesn’t matter because we can create friendship and connect people from opposite sides of the world. 

The outside world has great products and technology. Our goal is to bring those products and technology to help our customers here in the United States be more efficient, productive and successful. 

Kevin, tell me about your background?

I started out in production back in the early 1990s and spent 25 years working in production management for two top 40 swine integrators. After 25 years, I had the opportunity to go to work for an animal health nutrition company as director of swine sales for almost nine years. And when Yulin asked me to come on board, I accepted and I've been with Hanley now for a year and a half. 

Throughout this process, I've had good opportunities to be a part of the industry with groups like 21st Century Pork and served on multiple committees with NPPC. Hanley is still a very active member in the allied industry portion of NPPC. 

What are some of the products that Hanley International offers?

At Hanley, we really pride ourselves on our vast array of different products. We have solutions and commodity-type products as well. We have a product called Boreox®, a vitamin E replacer, with exclusive distribution rights and exciting new research we’ll be ready to share this fall. We have essential amino acids such as lysine and threonine. We offer flavorings like ProGarlic® as well as FlyGuard® for cattle. 

We have SuperPhy® phytase and SuperXy®, which is our xylanase product. We also offer tribasic copper chloride, zinc hydroxyl chloride and manganese hydroxy chloride. We offer trace minerals and an Essential 4-product combination and our Advance D® as 25-OH-D3. 

This past year, we have done some research with a third-party independent research company as well as an integrator. We launched a new product called FormiNator® at the World Pork Expo which can help with average daily gain and feed intake in swine. 

Your products seem directed at offering essential, fundamental components to the pig diet? 

Absolutely – this is diving down deep. Most producers understand the corn, soy and the DDGs, but this is the back end of the VTMs. Some of these products are add-ins for the swine diet.

Yulin, Hanley International talks about combining global and local solutions. What does that mean in practice for swine and poultry producers today? 

We want to be the bridge. There is a lot of good technology all around the globe, and we've been taking advantage of the vast global supplier network. That's why we've been connected to the suppliers, the freight forwarders as well as carriers and warehouses near the port, along with blenders in the US. 

We are bringing products here from the other side of the world. That's how we connect global to local. To meet all our customers' needs, we have to be localized. Many products that have been brought in can’t be used right away and have to be further refined to meet those needs. 

We are bringing in very concentrated products and blend them down to specific levels, such as our vitamin E50 replacement with our Boreox® product along with our SuperPhy® Phytase products. That's how we create our solutions. In the meantime, we have Hanley mineral premix that is customized to work on sows and nursery pigs.

Kevin has great experience with 25+ years of experience with the US industry. He knows exactly what the customer needs. That helps us feed a global solution to meet the customer's needs. 

We have a very strict quality control process where we ask potential suppliers to fill out all our paperwork and questionnaires, and we do a lot of product testing. No one ships our products to us before we qualify them. We also have our suppliers test samples of our products before they leave the shipping port.

Once they arrive, we complete double testing to make sure the product meets our product standards. We want all our global solutions coming here to have high quality standards to meet the customers’ needs here. We strictly follow all FDA standards and monitor quality continuously.

What makes Hanley International unique?

During my time in production, there were many days when production management would sit in a conference room and try to figure out how to lower costs. We would ask, “Do we reduce or cut our vaccine dose in half? Do we change this or that?” We'd spend all day trying to figure it out. Most of the time, we'd come out of the meeting with maybe only 10 cents per head savings which was very frustrating. 

I learned that most producers can tell you exactly when they're going break with a disease and what their PSY is going to be. But when you start talking about diets, which makes up 70% of their cost, they really have very little knowledge outside of corn, soybean meal and DDG costs. 

They often have very little understanding about amino acids, vitamins and other components of feed that can make a big difference. They’d say “ask my nutritionist” or “let's just get the cheapest product in.” But the cheapest isn't always better.

What we're trying to do here at Hanley is bring in really high-quality products to the livestock industry. Our team only has five people and having warehouse space versus having fancy office space allows us to take those cost savings and share them back with the customer. That's our goal with Hanley. 

Even though I’ve been in sales for the last 10+ years, I'm still a producer at heart, and I don't think that's ever going to leave. I want to do what's right for the producer and help them understand the importance and value of quality products. 

We offer very high-quality products and can do so at a lower cost for our customers because we don’t have a lot of overhead. We work with a lot of different blenders and universities to complete third-party trials for our products. We also have strategic partnerships with both the state and our manufacturers. 

We have a lot of support and can help us with product evaluations and data collection. If a producer needs a certain product, we're able to find that. We carry the key market solutions, but if they need something special, we can offer that as well. With Yulin's ties back to China and globally, we can offer a more unique blend of solutions to our customers. 

How important have your research connections been in product development?

Research is very important for us. We have some established relationships in the team that have been ongoing for 20+ years. Reaching that trust early on helps our partners understand the groundwork behind our products. Because of this, they are able to ask more specific questions to assist with trial testing. 

We also partner with some nutrition companies and blenders as well. When we receive questions about our data, it never bothers us – we welcome it – because that's how we learn and it gives us the context and information to be able to share with future customers. 

We've gained sales over time, but we’ll sometimes see potential customers that are on the fence. We have full intentions of bringing them over and plan to do so by gathering more research and information. Right now, we're working with the University of Colorado, University of Arkansas and Kansas State on cross-species trials. A lot of studies have been conducted on our phytase product by Dr. Hans Stein.

We're more than willing to share product samples. Some have wanted to send our samples off to their own labs to be tested or do their own trial work. We'll support that as well. We're not scared of trials, and we actually welcome it as a learning opportunity. 

Yulin, any closing thoughts? 

As I said earlier, Hanley means friendship and connection. We want to bridge those quality products that can offer solutions to our customers here. Everything that goes in the bag – you can trust in our high-quality ingredients. So, we hope you’ll place your order right now.