Meat co-op dilemma
Meat processor Alliance Group's cash-strapped farmer shareholders face a dilemma - either pour more money into the co-operative or risk losing 100% ownership and control.
The $2 million-plus investment at the cooperative’s Pukeuri plant at Oamaru and Mataura plant in Southland enables highly-accurate chemical lean (fat to meat ratio) measurements for manufacturing beef.
Kerry Stevens, general manager processing at Alliance Group, says: “Measuring the chemical lean (CL), or fat content of manufacturing beef, has always been important but traditional methods of assessing it carried potential for error.
“There has been increasing demand for highly accurate and rapidly-obtained chemical lean values and this new technology enables us to meet the chemical lean specifications for manufacturing beef with greater precision.
“That means the customer gets an accurately measured product and meat value is optimised, realising the best returns for our farmer shareholders.
“A further advantage is that we can also target different grades of product with maximum accuracy and meet any specific customer requirements.”
He added: “The investment is another example of the co-operative’s wider strategy to invest in technology and optimise returns for our New Zealand farmer-shareholders. It also reinforces the co-operative’s commitment to ensuring our plants remain competitive on a global scale.”
The project includes new automatic weighing and labelling machinery. Processing of beef is also carried out at the cooperative’s Levin plant and Alliance Group is exploring installing the technology there at a future date.
Earlier this year, the cooperative commissioned new robotic primal/middle cutting machinery in the boning rooms at its Pukeuri plant in Oamaru and at Smithfield plant in Timaru.
