GA Pet Food Partners: 95% Bird Reduction With AVIX Autonomic Laser Systems

When gulls turned GA Pet Food Partners’ riverside facility into a daily battle of mess and disruption, the family-owned pet food producer needed a solution that actually worked. The AVIX Autonomic laser bird control proved to be the answer, cutting bird activity by 95%.

The GA Pet Food Partners site sits close to a river, making it a magnet for gulls all year round. Herring gulls and black-headed gulls perched on rooftops from sunrise to sunset, waiting for pet food products to be moved between buildings by forklift before swooping down to scavenge spillage or land on the product mid-transfer.

At its worst, around 200 gulls were active on site.

The result was fouling, damage to property and product, and a poor impression for a producer built on high hygiene standards. Three bird scaring kites, tried earlier, became tangled and had no lasting effect. The business needed a proven product, not another improvised fix.

After looking into the alternatives, the managers chose the AVIX Autonomic, an automated laser bird deterrent. The unit sweeps a moving laser beam across the site, which birds instinctively treat as an approaching danger. That triggers a flight response, and the constant movement of the beam keeps the area clear around the clock once the product is configured.

At GA Pet Food Partners, one AVIX Autonomic unit covered a projection area of 2.6 hectares (around 6.4 acres) and has been running since June 2016. During the first phase it was used alongside an audible deterrent to strengthen the effect.

This is what the product delivered for GA Pet Food Partners over the failed kites:

For a food site plagued by gulls, the AVIX Autonomic works as a practical seagull repellent, applying steady pressure without noise, chemicals or physical barriers.

After close to a year of running the AVIX Autonomic alongside the audible deterrent, the outcome was clear. Gull numbers dropped from around 200 to between 7 and 20, a 95% reduction in activity, directly attributed to the product.

With the birds largely gone, damage to property and product fell sharply, hygiene across the site improved, and the facility looked the way a premium producer expects it to.

“We were not sure how effective the Autonomic would be but after a year of the operation, we have got 95% of bird reduction which made us certain to buy one more Autonomic.”

John Schofield, Hygiene Manager, GA Pet Food Partners

The results convinced the team to order a second AVIX Autonomic unit. Reflecting on the decision, John Schofield added:

“We have never put a value on the cost of gulls to the business. It was more a fact that they were a nuisance and presented a bad image for the company to visitors. Now we can show that we are being proactive in choosing an effective method of bird deterrence.”

For food production sites in particular, where hygiene and reputation carry as much weight as physical damage, the AVIX Autonomic offers a humane and reliable way to keep birds off the property for the long term.