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Irish tech firm strikes Namibian deal

Dublin-based agri-food tech firm Emydex Technology has signed a deal with the Meat Corporation (MeatCo) of Namibia, in Africa, to provide it with software systems.

The Irish firm develops and exports factory floor data capture, production reporting and traceability software systems to leading meat and processing firms across the globe.

The new two-year contract, worth €300,000, will involve six different MeatCo sites and has helped drive increases in Emydex’s workforce, which is expected to almost double from its current 22 employees. Twenty additional staff will be recruited over the next 18 months thanks to the new deal.

David McMahon, chief executive, Emydex Technology, explained the company was benefiting from export-led growth in the agri-food sector.

“Thanks to the solid growth in Irish food exports, there is a corresponding growth in demand for more sophisticated and robust software systems for production management, reporting and traceability.

“Responding to this growing demand, we will be doubling our workforce over the next 18 months, recruiting 20 highly skilled software programmers to work in our three main operating divisions in Dublin. Alongside the country’s reputation for high-quality food processing, Ireland is also becoming better-known for its food processing software capabilities.”

MeatCo is a meat processing and marketing organisation that works on behalf of Namibian farmers.

Source: GlobalMeatnews.com – Georgi Gyton article

Globalmeatnews.com

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Emydex live in MeatCo, Namibia

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:
Emydex today announce that their factory floor Data Capture, Production Reporting and Traceability system is now live and operational in MeatCo (Namibia)’s main beef processing plant in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

The beef primal deboning system in Windhoek is the first of an eight phase project that will see Emydex systems rolled out across MeatCo’s six beef processing operations in four separate locations in Namibia, as well as integrating Emydex to the Table Bay Cold Store in South Africa.

The two year, Euro 300k contract includes system rollout to Meatco’s two export approved slaughter and boning plants in Windhoek and Okahandja. Both plants are capable of slaughtering up to 1500cattle per day. The naturally grass fed Beef for which Namibia is famous is supplemented with Beef from Meatco’s own feed lot at Okapuka.

The Meat Corporation of Namibia (‘MeatCo’) also operate two further non-export abattoirs owned by the Namibian government but managed by Meatco, in Katima and Oshakati, which will both see Emydex installed. Finally a Wholesale beef processing plant and a cannery (both on the Windhoek site) will operate Emydex’s production management system.

Having pre-configured MeatCo’s customer specific business requirements in Dublin during February, Emydex staff were onsite in Windhoek during the Months of March and April, further configuring and customising the Emydex system to comply with the local market requirements of Meatco’s main export plant.

Phase one of the Windhoek project covered the carcass chills, carcass dispatch, boning hall, primal and carton packing, finished product stock, carton dispatch and integration to Meatco’s Sage X3 ERP system. Emydex are currently working on the Meatco Wholesale plant in Windhoek, soon to be followed by the Cannery and finally the Windhoek Beef slaughter line.

The company are targeting September 2014 as a likely roll out date for Windhoek system into Meatco’s second export plant in Okahandja.Due to the inherent flexibility and usability of the Emydex system Meatco are planning to roll out the Emydex system in the Oshakati and Katima abattoirs themselves,with remote support from Emydex as needed.

Commenting on the first phase of the Emydex system roll-out, AndriesTaljaardt,Meatco’s Windhoek Plant Manager said

“While slaughter continues uninterrupted, system upgrades are currently being effected at our Windhoek abattoir to improve the effectiveness of operations and maximise output in order to cater to growing customer demands.

Because of these demands, and the fact that preferences and specifications are continuously changing, we have to move into the direction which the market is moving. We have installed a new Production Management Software System (Emdyex) and layout in our Windhoek abattoir deboning department, which allows for a lot of value addition to our products. The Emydex system controls the volumes and all the information on the deboning floor and is responsible for the production recons and the labelling of products.

With the new layout, we have introduced an additional vacuum line and an additional frozen line. With that, we can now put up to 420 carcasses through deboning per day within normal working hours. For May, we are looking to put more than 6600 carcasses through deboning. Round about June, once the system is fully implemented, the number of carcasses we want to put through deboning is about 7000.”

In addition Andries said “We chose Emydex given it is a highly technological system that is used in many international abattoirs that adhere to European Union standards. Meatco is a pioneer in quality standards compliance in Namibia and is one of the first companies to achieve certification for international standards like ISO 9001 and HACCP.”

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out, Nico Weck, Group Chief Financial Officer at the MeatCo group said “since implementing Emydex’s shop floor barcode labelling and scanning system at our Windhoek primal deboning operations, our managers now have instant access to accurate reporting on our Yields, Stocks and Traceability”.

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7.5m Head of Livestock

Those in charge of the mammoth administrative task of buying and tracing 7.5m head of livestock per year in Ireland have emerged intact from the horse burger controversy.

Much of the credit must go to companies like Emydex in Dublin.

Emydex software is designed to manage food production processes from door to door, from arrival of animals to the abattoir, through kill line, boning hall, warehousing and dispatch.

The system includes real-time links to both the government-run animal movement and tracking systems as well as quality assurance schemes, and provides for full meat traceability.

It manages the complex system of payments to farmers, but also enables customers to run their food production lines more efficiently; manage, control and report on stock; analyse their yields and costs; and report on food chain traceability and factory and operator performance.

Today, Emydex is running in four out of the top five meat producing companies on the island of Ireland, and in more than 40 plants spread all over Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France.

The company is celebrating its rollout in the Dawn Meats Group, one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British beef, pork and lamb in Europe, and an Emydex customer since 2007. It is planned to complete the Emydex roll-out across the group in 2013, including the lamb processing in Ballyhaunis.

Emydex also supplies software to Kepak, and the Dunbia Group and Moy Park in the UK. The software runs on any compatible hardware system.

Just how complex the challenge is can be seen in the very first step of the meat chain, procuring livestock and paying for them.

Each year, Irish export plants buy almost 1.4 million cattle, 2.5m sheep, and 3.5 million pigs …

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Emydex rollout across Dawn Meats Group

Dawn Meats Brand
An Emydex customer since 2007, the Dawn Meats Group is one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British Beef, Pork and Lamb in Europe.

Last year (2012) was a milestone year for the group as it secured a 5 year €300m contract for McDonalds, in addition to building a new state of the art patty plant at Carroll’s Cross, Co Waterford, as well as acquiring West Devon Meats in South West England. This follows the group’s acquisition of the Duerden beef abattoir in the Lake District, and the upgrade of their beef slaughter and processing plant in Cardington, UK in 2011.

Dawn Meats began rolling out Emydex’s Production Management software system across the group during 2008. Four years later, Emydex continues to operate as the group standard factory floor data capture and production and traceability reporting system in 11 of the 13 plants within the group including Dawn Meats France.

From Carcass intake, through boning, further processing, packing, box stock and dispatch, Emydex captures and reports on production data, enabling Dawn Meats to analyse and manage their stocks, yields and dispatches, whilst maintaining full food chain traceability.

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out Shane Slattery, Group IT Manager with Dawn Meats said “Emydex is a central pillar of our strategic IT plan going forward, and our goal now is to concentrate on completing the roll-out of Emydex to our primary processing sites by year end. This plan may seem aggressive, but we believe that it is achievable on account of the inherent flexibility of the core Emydex product to handle any differences in the business processes required in our disparate sites”.

Plans are to complete the Emydex roll-out across the group in 2013, with the implementation of the system at Dawn’s Lamb processing plant in Ballyhaunis in Ireland, as well as the roll-out of Emydex’s kill line & payments systems to all of Dawn’s slaughter plants within the group.

For more information on the Emydex kill line system contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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Updated Post Mortem QC Station Developed

This application was developed so that it could be run on either fixed position industrial PC stations or mobile devices (MDA). It was developed in response to a need to eliminate poorly presented carcasses.

The carcasses arrive at the inspection point in sequence. The QC operator can enter a fault type and the system will give the opportunity to select the part of the carcass where the fault is present. Any number of faults can be registered against each carcass. After a pre-defined number of instances of the same fault a supervisor is informed allowing corrective action to be taken and recorded.

All fault history is recorded.

Please note that this is intended for use by in plant QC. It is not intended as a veterinary inspection station; however it would be fairly simple for a similar application to be configured for use by the veterinarians.

 

 

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Liffey Meats opt for Emydex Kill line system

Liffey Meats Branding

In November 2011, Liffey meats started a new chapter in the history of Ballinasloe by processing the first cattle in their new state of the art meat factory in the town. This Emydex Beef kill line system currently incorporates Lairage booking, Sequencing and Grading terminals as well an offal packing station, Carcass dispatch station and a Beef Payments system with links to Liffey Meats flagship processing plant in Ballyjamesduff. The Mallon family who own and operate Liffey Meats, have three state of the art processing plants located in Cavan and Carlow and Galway Ireland. An Emydex implementation team deployed their kill line system from green-light to go-live within 10 days starting from scratch.

Commenting on the roll-out, Derek McDermott, Financial Controller with the Liffey Meats group said “I was impressed to see how quickly the Emdyex team were able to deploy their kill line traceability system into our new slaughter plant in Ballinasloe without having previous worked with the Liffey Meat’s group. Their kill line and payments systems went live without incident, and have been functioning stably ever since. We initially opted to install Emydex’s standard beef kill line system, but soon after go-live realised there were many business specific reports as well as specific system customisations required to match our existing business processes. Again the Emydex team were able to code these requirements up for us without hassle in a short space of time. It’s early days for Liffey Meats as an Emydex customer, but so far, so good. Their support structures are solid also.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “it’s rewarding to see that after 5 years of product design and development, Emydex today have a full suite of robust and stable software systems that can be installed into different working environments with the minimum of effort and fuss. Well done to all those who worked on the Ballinasloe rollout Algis, Carl and especially to Daniel, our technical delivery manager for going the extra mile.”

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