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Dawn Meats Group: More Than Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

More than twenty years after Dawn Meats Group first started working with Emydex, the partnership has been recognised with one of our twenty-year Customer Milestone Plaques. Earlier this month, the plaque was presented to Shane Slattery, Chief Information Officer at Dawn Meats Group, marking one of the longest-standing customer relationships in Emydex’s history.

About Dawn Meats Group

Founded in County Waterford in 1980, Dawn Meats Group is a family-owned business and a leading beef and lamb processor. The group employs more than 12,000 people across thirteen countries, operates eleven sites in Ireland, six in New Zealand and thirteen in the UK, and supplies retailers, manufacturers and foodservice customers in over 70 countries. Each year it processes around 1.6 million cattle, 8 million sheep and 70,000 deer, sourced from 30,000 farmers and 4,300 farmer shareholders.

How it started

Dawn Meats first began working with Emydex in 2005, in our own early years as a company, and started rolling out Emydex Production Management across the group in 2008. Grannagh, Rathdowney and Charleville went live in Ireland, followed in November 2009 by Highland Meats in Scotland, where the first phase centred on Carcass Management integrated to the plant’s existing kill line.

Martin Curran, then Group Factory Systems Manager at Dawn Meats, said at the Highland go-live:

It’s a credit to the joint Emydex/Dawn team that we are now in a position where with adequate planning, Emydex module roll-outs can be completed within a short space of time without any interruption to production.”

Within four years of the first rollout, the system was operating as the group standard for factory floor data capture, production control and traceability reporting in eleven of the thirteen plants in the group at that time, covering everything from carcass intake through boning, packing and dispatch.

Shane Slattery said at the time:

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.”

What changed along the way

Quite a lot. In 2015 Dawn went live with Emydex Warehouse Management at its cold store and distribution site near Birmingham, covering goods inwards, blast freezing, put-away, picking and dispatch.

Then came quality. Dawn Meats’ factory checks had been paper-based until that point: printed, handed out, filled in, countersigned, filed, and physically retrieved whenever an auditor asked for them. The Emydex Quality Management System went live in two Irish plants in 2019. By 2024 it was running across fourteen primary processing plants in Ireland and the UK, and Dawn’s own technical team had built close to 500 quality workflows in it themselves, from abattoir and boning hall pre-op checks to GMP audits and metal detector checks, without needing to involve our developers or their internal IT department.

More than twenty years on

Dawn Meats Group More Than Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

Twenty years is a long time in any technology relationship. Over that period Emydex has become part of how we run our plants, across production, traceability and quality. The reliability of the system matters, and so does the fact that the people behind it understand meat processing. We are pleased to mark the milestone and we look forward to what comes next.”

Shane Slattery, Chief Information Officer, Dawn Meats Group

Two decades brings a lot of change: new sites, new customers, new regulations, new people on both sides. What matters is that the system has kept earning its place through all of it. The milestone plaques are our way of recognising that.

Dawn Meats Group is one of a number of Emydex customers now reaching ten years or more with us, across beef, pork, lamb, poultry and seafood processing in Ireland, the UK, Australasia, Africa and the Americas.

Congratulations to Shane and everyone at Dawn Meats Group and thank you for the trust you have placed in our team over more than twenty years.

To learn more about how Emydex supports beef and lamb processors with production management, traceability and quality systems, visit our Beef Processing Software and Lamb Processing Software pages, or contact our team.

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Ashbourne Meat Processors: Ten Years of Partnership with Emydex

Earlier this month, we shared that Emydex has started delivering Customer Milestone Plaques to long-standing customers across our global markets, recognising partnerships of ten, fifteen and twenty years. The first plaque has now been delivered to Ashbourne Meat Processors, marking ten years of working with Emydex.

About Ashbourne Meat Processors

Founded in 1985, Ashbourne Meat Processors is a family-owned Irish beef processor with operations in Roscrea, County Tipperary, and Naas, County Kildare.

The business employs close to 200 people across its abattoir, deboning and cold storage operations, supplying premium chilled beef to customers throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Ashbourne has also received recognition for the quality and sustainability of its products in recent years, including a gold medal at the World Steak Challenge and Gold membership of Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme.

Connecting Two Plants Through One System

Before the Emydex implementation, Ashbourne’s Roscrea and Naas plants were largely operating independently. Livestock information recorded at Roscrea generated its own paperwork, which then had to be recreated when carcasses were transferred to Naas or to other sites.

The implementation was completed across the two sites in phases, starting with the Naas deboning operation before moving to the Roscrea abattoir, roughly 100 kilometres away.

Both plants were connected through the same system, covering processes from livestock intake through boning, packing and dispatch. Ear tags could also be scanned and animal information registered automatically with AIMS, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Identification and Movement System, removing a step that had previously relied on manual data entry.

PJ Butler, Plant Manager at Roscrea, described the impact shortly after the system went live:

The savings in administration were immediate. We saved a labour unit in the office immediately, and the piles of paperwork and stacks of files are a thing of the past. We’re almost paperless now, except for the cheques which some of our more traditional farming suppliers prefer over electronic payments. I estimate that actual physical paperwork has decreased by 95 percent, and that’s a huge achievement.”

Ten Years On

Ashbourne Meat Processors: Ten Years of Partnership with Emydex

A decade later, Ashbourne continues to use Emydex across both plants.

After ten years, Emydex is firmly embedded in how we manage our operations. The consistency and traceability it provides across both plants, together with the team’s understanding of the beef industry, has been an important part of that relationship.”

Donal Houlihan
Operations Manager, Ashbourne Meat Processors

A decade brings a lot of change: new regulations, growing volumes, new plant layouts, sometimes new technology on the factory floor altogether. Emydex has kept working alongside Ashbourne through all of that, and the two companies are still working together ten years later.

Ashbourne is one of several Emydex customers now reaching ten years or more with us, across beef, pork, lamb, poultry and seafood processing in Ireland, the UK, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. Congratulations to everyone at Ashbourne Meat Processors on ten years of partnership and thank you for the trust you have placed in our team throughout that time.

To learn more about how Emydex supports beef processors with production management, traceability and quality systems, visit our Beef Processing Software page or contact our team.

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Emydex Visits Silver Fern Farms Te Aroha and Pacific Plants

During their latest operational tour across Australasia, Emydex CEO David McMahon and General Manager – Australasia Shane Hayes visited two Silver Fern Farms (SFF) beef processing plants in New Zealand: Te Aroha and Pacific (Hastings).

The visits reinforced the strong partnership between Emydex and New Zealand’s leading red meat processor and highlighted the continued evolution of digital transformation across the SFF network.

Strengthening a Proven Partnership

Silver Fern Farms has been working with Emydex since 2020 to modernise production management, traceability and data visibility across its beef plants.

With both Te Aroha and Pacific live on Emydex, all six SFF beef primary butchery sites are fully completed.

David McMahon commented:

“These visits reaffirm the strength of our collaboration with SFF and highlight the real impact that digital transformation can have on plant performance, visibility and decision-making across the network.”

Insights From the Plant Floor

The visits allowed the Emydex team to observe production flows, terminal usage and operator interactions directly on the factory floor. This hands-on engagement ensures that future improvements, refinements and upcoming deployments can be aligned with the operational reality of each site.

Shane Hayes added:

“It was great to meet the plant teams in Te Aroha and Pacific and see firsthand how they’re using Emydex day-to-day. Their feedback is essential as we continue to improve and scale the solution across new species and plants.”

The Emydex team would also like to acknowledge the support received during the visits. Special thanks to Jeff Hulena for travelling to shadow both plant tours, and to Dylan Marsh for accompanying the Pacific visit. We also appreciate the time and insights shared by plant managers Namu Searancke-Henderson at Te Aroha and Cory Hogg at Pacific, who hosted the team on site.

Go-Lives at Pacific and Te Aroha

Both plants have successfully gone live on Emydex MES as part of Silver Fern Farms’ multi-year digital transformation programme, supported by strong collaboration between SFF and Emydex teams.

Pacific (Hastings)

The Pacific site completed its transition from a legacy CRS system to Emydex through a structured deployment, including a custom liveweight solution tailored to the site’s requirements and the rollout of SFF BI V2, providing enhanced data insights.

SFF’s Chief Transformation Officer, Matt Ballard, praised the progress, describing the milestone as a significant step forward for the beef network.

Te Aroha

Te Aroha was the fourth SFF beef primary butchery site to adopt Emydex MES, a deployment that has since proven highly stable and effective across all plant operations.

Its long-term performance continues to demonstrate the adaptability of the Emydex platform to different operational layouts and species-specific workflows.

Looking Ahead

With the beef network nearing completion, the next phase will focus on expansion into venison and lamb, continuous improvement initiatives and further standardisation across the SFF group.

The New Zealand plant visits strengthen collaboration and ensure both teams remain aligned as SFF advances its long-term digital transformation journey.

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Learn how Emydex can support your plant’s digital transformation with robust MES, traceability and production control solutions.

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Emydex & Sustainable Beef. The Journey Goes Live

Supporting a modern beef processing operation in Nebraska

Emydex is proud to announce the go‑live of its software platform at Sustainable Beef, a newly launched beef processing facility based in North Platte, Nebraska, USA. After months of preparation and collaboration, the Emydex team was on site in June 2025 to assist with the final setup, configuration and support for the system’s first operational phase. This marks an important step in the deployment of our solution across the plant and a milestone in our partnership with one of the most forward-thinking beef processors in the United States.

About Sustainable Beef

Sustainable Beef was founded to bring transparency, efficiency and shared value to every part of the beef supply chain. The project was led by a group of cattle producers and investors with deep regional ties and a vision for long-term impact. The North Platte facility is expected to:

  • Process up to 1,500 cattle per day at full capacity
  • Employ over 850 people locally
  • Contribute more than $1.2 billion annually to the Nebraska economy

These figures reflect not just scale but a commitment to redefining community-driven beef production.

On‑site support during go‑live

During the visit, our team worked closely with Sustainable Beef operators to configure and test the platform in a live production environment. Key activities included:

  • Activating kill line traceability
  • Enabling end‑to‑end traceability reporting from intake through dispatch
  • Supporting inventory and quality control functions
  • Assisting with the use of plant-floor devices
  • Ensuring a smooth handover for autonomous system use

Our on‑site support ensured a seamless transition from planning to operation, with full process visibility from day one.

A growing partnership

Sustainable Beef is building more than a processing facility. It is creating a blueprint for transparent, efficient and community-focused beef processing. Emydex will continue to support this mission with scalable modules for production management, traceability, inventory control and compliance. With the successful go‑live now complete, the foundation is laid for ongoing digital transformation and operational excellence. Want to learn more about how Emydex supports beef processors with traceability, efficiency and compliance systems?
Contact us today to schedule a Demo.

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A new Dawn for Quality systems

Dawn Meats Group, one of Europe’s leading meat processing companies, sought to streamline its factory-floor Quality Management System with Emydex.

 

Meet the client

Dawn Meats Group is a family-owned business established in 1980 in Waterford, Ireland. The company has grown to become one of the largest and most important beef and sheep processing groups in the industry. The group employs over 8,000 people across twelve countries, including ten sites in Ireland and thirteen in the UK, and exports to over 50 countries worldwide.

Every year, Dawn Meats Group processes over 1 million cattle and 3.5 million sheep, generating more than €2.5 billion in turnover for the company and contributing over €1.67 billion to rural economies through 30,000 farms in Ireland and the UK.

The numbers are staggering, and so is their success.

 

The Opportunity

Dawn Meats developed its own in-house quality management system, which largely relied on manual, paper-based checks throughout its factory floors.

While this was rigorous and helped to maintain the company’s highest quality products, it was inefficient, creating delays, tons of paper, and hours of data entry. The old manual way of working involved lengthy printing, handing out, filling in, returning, checking, countersigning, and storing paper records. On top of that, files had to be physically retrieved in the event of an audit or to trend data.

For the past decade (since 2013), Emydex has been developing an Electronic Quality Management System (EQMS) capable of being used in single plants as well as across multi-plant group processors like Dawn Meats Group

Emydex’s Quality Management System is a software system that allows food processors carry out their factory and food safety quality and audit checks on tablets, reporting instantly in the back-office, replacing all paper-based quality check sheets on the factory floor.

A perfect fit for Dawn Meats Group.

“​We selected Emydex, a long-standing partner of ours, due to Emydex’s understanding of our food production facilities, their excellent software development ability and personal project management delivery,” said Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group.

 

There were several drivers behind Dawn Meats Group’s decision to select Emydex:

 

One System

The first was Emydex gave Dawn Meats Group one single system, with Emydex’s quality module sitting alongside all other Emydex factory floor MES, Production and Warehouse Management modules on one common platform.

“We have worked with Emydex over the past decade on the production and traceability side, so we trust them”, commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Cloud or On-Premises

The EQMS system can be installed on-premises or in the cloud. Emydex doesn’t force its customers to operate their QMS out of the cloud; they can install it on-prem if necessary.

“Emydex has had a tremendous impact on our shop floor quality data collection on site, as well as safeguarding completion of checks in a scheduled and timely manner.  Its reliability and speed have ensured that workflows carried out have been given full attention, and no corners are cut.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Online and Offline Mode

Another key differentiator is that the system can work offline as well as online for all compatible mobile devices, using local databases. This means operators can switch to offline mode when capturing quality data in areas with poor or zero Wi-Fi coverage.

“Our QA’s like the systems’ ability to save checks within the factory, without needing to return the checks to folders which would previously have occurred. The system’s speed and performance has allowed for more thorough and detailed checks on the line, as well as increasing their time available to carry out additional checks, without needing to carry out tedious admin tasks.”, commented Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team.

 

Flexibility

Finally, the system is very configurable in-house including an easy-to-use quality workflow builder tool. This function allows in-house QC personnel (non-IT people) to design and build their own Quality workflows in-house, including QC surveys, QC check-sheets and quality audits.

“I like how their QMS system is flexible, and how we can configure it to how we wanted to work – not something you get with an out-of-the-box solution. This flexibility means we can build our own workflows ourselves, not involving Emydex nor internal IT.” added John Coleman, Dawn Meats Group, Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Going Live

The Emydex Quality Management System has been operating in Dawn Meats Group’s Irish & UK facilities for over five years now. Having first gone live in two Irish plants in 2019, today the system is operating in Dawn Meat’s seven primal processing plants in Ireland, as well as a further seven group primal processing plants in the UK, fourteen plants so far, with further roll-outs underway, including three retail processing plants in the UK.

At this point Dawn’s group technical QC team have configured internally almost 500 separate QC workflows in Emydex including for example, Abattoir and Boning Hall pre-op checks, GMP audits, metal detector checks, glass and hard plastic, knife register, and attendance checks etc. Once built centrally, such workflows can then be used across all the group’s sites.

 

The Results

Emydex EQMS helps Dawn Meats Group streamline the QMS processes across its factories and ensure they are working to the most effective QMS system. Standardising the QMS and FSM systems across the group improves compliance and shares best practices throughout all the facilities.

“External auditors have had a positive outlook on the Emydex quality system, frequently commenting on its benefits of generating reports, assigning close-outs, and collating data at a click of a button.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Using the Document Management System included within the system, sites can share generic documents and processes and tailor the specifics to the site. This reduces time lost in writing up documents and figuring out procedures and risk assessments.

The system creates actions, alerts, notifications and alarms in real-time and automatically tells them when they are out of compliance, forcing the immediate implementation of corrective actions.

“The less obvious savings are evident too – less time and effort, fewer mistakes and corrections, reduced hold-ups, etc. I can see if people are making the required quality checks and if they are making them at exactly the right times.” John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

It improves compliance and reduces issues in announced and unannounced audits, reducing risk with defective product, product recalls and customer satisfaction.

The Emydex system frees up resources to drive product quality improvements and frees up archive space and storage. It will give central management a holistic view through instant visibility of all factories in one centralised system, making KPI reporting easier and maximising safety, quality and compliance.

“The result is that resources have been freed up. Less paperwork, collection is instant, no errors, less time, no printing, archive space has been freed up, we have instant and easy retrieval of documents – everything has improved and is more accurate.” commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

Finally, this accurate QMS data can drive operational processes and business decisions, helping continuous improvement by providing instant effect data.

“The Emydex Quality System is an innovative, adaptable software solution which fulfils the needs of Dawn Meats Group and continues to evolve through more areas of our factories, making them fit for the future.”
Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group

 

Don’t wait! Embrace the future of quality management with electronic quality management
software.

If you want to learn more – contact Emydex in any of our global market offices in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North America

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