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X-ray technology, advanced plate freezers, and ASRS will drive today’s meat plant into the future as the industry continues to ride the exports boom.

Key developments such as X-ray technology, advanced plate freezers and Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) are changing the face of the meat processing plant as the industry speeds up to meet the fast-rising demand for exports.

While most chicken and pork processors have adopted high-speed X-ray technology in the last 10 years, for example, the meat industry has been slower on the uptake due to the size of carcasses and the number of heads of cattle needing to be processed.

A lack of automation may have held the industry back, but the meat plant of the future looks vastly different as larger processors move quickly to acquire the right technology to adapt to a changing market.

Omron general manager Henry Zhou says a lack of automation has resulted in high cost and low levels of productivity and traceability.

“A typical Australian abattoir employs 500 people that process about 800 cattle per day,” he says. “This means one person can only process 1.6 cattle a day, as most of the work is done manually.”

In a recent inquiry by the Australian Productivity Commission it was found that labour costs accounted for about 60 per cent of a processor’s total manufacturing costs.

“Traditional automation solutions such as PLC, VSD, switch gears, and robots have been around for 50 years, and they’re great when handling products of the same size, in the same location, and when collecting simple information.”

“But the reality in the meat industry is that every beast is different in terms of size, colour, and age,” Zhou says.

Machine vision

Zhou believes machine vision technology is the key to breaking through the current bottleneck.

“In the past five years, the technology has improved dramatically,” he says. “New machines can see things as well – if not better – than the human eye.”

Until now, the cost of investing in and integrating automation has been too high for most processors, but a powerful control platform will reduce the cost.

“We’re seeing a new wave of innovation in manufacturing technology as part of the Internet of Things, and robots with Artificial Intelligence, and this is generating a lot of attention.

“In the past the human muscle was replicated in manufacturing technology, but now we’re replicating the whole human.”

While many plants are still using a standardisation model that was developed 20 years ago, automation technology is now improving on a monthly basis.

A fully automated meat processing plant with machine vision technology can potentially deliver improved productivity and yield while reducing costs.

An integrated control platform such as Omron’s Sysmac platform can run configuration, programming, simulation, controlling, monitoring and troubleshooting for all automation equipment including sensors, vision, PLC, VSD, servo, temperature, safety and robotics.

Horizontal plate freezers

Rob Blythman is the national business development manager of food and beverage at solutions company Total Construction.

He is currently seeing a lot of interest in the plate freezer process, which protein processing systems company Milmeq is pioneering with its technology.

“We’re seeing very big plate freezers that can handle multiple boxes of meat at a time,” he says. “It’s about increasing the throughput to provide more heads of cattle.

“Multiple boxes can be packed into the horizontal plate freezer, which instantly freezes the meat to minus 40 degrees celsius.”

Blythman says larger processors can now afford to invest more heavily in technology.

“The export market in China and Japan is seeing our meat processors getting way over $6 a kilogram for their meat, so the faster you can export the better,” he says, adding that both a strong shelf life and the automation of tracking and retrieval systems are vital.

The meat industry is currently making big investments in technology, despite warnings about the stabilisation of prices.

Another big challenge lies in sourcing cattle, according to Blythman.

“We have clients who want a plant that can cater to 1800 head a day, but there might only be between 300 and 1500 head available,” Blythman says.

In his opinion, the industry will boom as soon as the next stock of cattle gets to age – but, as he points out, the time that this will take is very dependent on the weather.”

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