For Alper Keskiner, Senior Director for Elanco TMEA, the AviPro Excellence Forum 2026 in Istanbul was more than a scientific gathering. It was a visible expression of the regional capability that Elanco has been building across Türkiye, the Middle East and North West Africa: technical expertise, field experience and trusted relationships with industry partners.

Keskiner described a period in which Elanco has continued to invest in its organisation despite a difficult operating environment marked by outbreaks, wars, earthquakes and economic volatility. His message was that a regional animal-health business cannot rely on a product catalogue alone when customers need support through changing field conditions and market disruption.

He pointed to the knowledge brought together through the Bayer Animal Health acquisition, combining experience from Lohmann Animal Health, Novartis Animal Health and Elanco. In his account, that combined base is intended to help the company offer a broader solution set rather than operate as a supplier of individual products.

The scale of the regional organisation is part of the story. Keskiner said the team has grown by roughly three times over the past five years. Growth in headcount is not automatically a commercial result, but in a technical category it can signal an ability to maintain closer connections with farms, distributors and professional partners while supporting more complex programmes.

The Istanbul forum offered a practical example of this model. Bringing scientists and poultry-health professionals from different countries together created a forum in which common problems could be assessed collectively and regional cooperation could be strengthened. For Keskiner, that exchange is directly relevant to the future of poultry health because it connects scientific understanding with the realities of implementation.

His remarks also underline a wider business point for animal health. Durable regional growth is often built through capability that is less visible than a launch or acquisition: teams that can translate technical knowledge into field support, organisations that remain present through volatility, and partnerships that turn information into action. AviPro Excellence Forum 2026 was presented as one platform for doing exactly that.