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Emydex running in 4 of 6 Irish Beef processing plants granted US export licences

Ireland is currently the only EU state to have been granted access to the lucrative US meat market since the BSE crisis in the 1990’s. Since the embargo was lifted earlier this year, Beef exports from Ireland to the US have increased significantly, according to the Department of Agriculture. As of November 2015, it is estimated that 1300 tonnes of beef valued at €8.5m, has been exported from Ireland.

A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said “This is an exceptionally strong start to this trade, considering that the first exports only went in March of this year and some of the plants were only approved for export as recently as September.”

To date only six Irish beef processing plants have managed to attain the necessary approvals to export beef to the US market.

Emydex Technology are pleased to note that four of the six plants that have succeeded in attaining the necessary Export approvals, are Irish beef processing plants that operate Emydex software on their factory floors for data capture, production and Traceability reporting.

Beef US Exporters - Dawn Meats - Charleville | Kepak - Kilbeggan | Slaney Foods International | Kepak - Longford

“It’s good news to see that trade has recommenced between Ireland and the US after 15 years of no activity. It will still take some time yet for Irish processors to restore and build new trading relationships with US customers, but given the high prices currently being experienced in the US, coupled with a demand for high-quality grass-fed beef, this bodes well for Irish supply”
David McMahon – Emydex CEO

Emydex software provides meat, fish and food processors with accurate reporting on shop floor production yields, stocks and traceability information in real-time.

“Today our software is running on over 1200 factory floor terminals as well as over 600 handheld scanners in 80 food processing plants spread across Ireland, the UK, France, Africa and Australia”

“Whether our customers have requirements for an abattoir or boning hall system, production planning or recipe control, traceability reporting or quality and compliance, we have software modules that can cater for each need.”

“As the software is modular and customisable, it means our customers can start on one particular pain point or area of the plant, and once this system is live and bedded in, the system can be extended to other areas or functions within the plant”added McMahon.

Source: The Irish Times Post by Eoin Burke-Kennedy

The Irish Times

In other related news, Northern Irish Pork Processors, Dunbia, have welcomed provisional approval for exporting pork to China. Dunbia also operate Emydex Factory Floor Software throughout their processing plants, so it comes as great news to Emydex to see that our customers are paving the way for the Irish agri-food industry, into some of the largest export markets in the world.

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Emydex live in Botswana Meat Commission

LOBATSE/FRANCISTOWN/MAUN – BOTSWANA:
Established by the Parliament of the Republic of Botswana in 1966, the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) procure, slaughter and process beef, as well as beef by-products for sale locally, regionally and internationally. BMC operate three abattoirs in Lobatse (main site and group head-office), Francistown and Maun, Botswana as well as a Tannery and Cannery in Lobatse. BMC also has cold storage facilities in South Africa with marketing subsidiaries in the UK, Germany, Holland and South Africa. Its two abattoirs in Lobatse and Francistown are licensed to sell in the EU as they meet all the EU animal welfare and food safety standards. BMC mostly exports to the EU and RSA.

In October 2014, one of Emydex’s international distributors, deployed the Emydex Packing & Processing Software module to eight Primal packing Industrial workstations in the Botswana Meat Commission’s main beef production plant in Lobatse, Botswana.

New-2

Emydex Primal Weigh-labelling system operating on eight industrial workstations

The Lobatse site is currently deboning 600 beef carcasses per day, producing over 15,000 primal pack labels. Each label is printed in ten separate languages including Arabic and Greek. Primal meat labels are printed with variable text incorporating formatting in compliance with the recent EU Food Allergen Labelling Regulation (EU directive 1169/2011).

Unlike their previous printing system BMC no longer need to define separate label templates for each product with fixed ingredient text. Instead the Emydex Packing system stores ingredient text as a variable against each product, thereby minimising the number of label templates required. BMC production managers and supervisors can identify any Allergens in the label ingredient text and highlight them in bold.

Mandatory country of origin labelling is accomplished by the Traceability recording functionality that is inherent within the Emydex Primal packing and labelling system.

Average label printing cycle time on Emydex factory floor application is 1.2 seconds, with physical label printing speeds averaging 1.8 seconds.

Commenting on the system go-live, Billy Mauco, IT manager with BMC said “Storing primal labels with variable text rather than fixed means we only need to maintain a fraction of the labels we previously supported. The new Emydex system also enables printing of variable labels in ten languages including Greek and Arabic, as well as font formatting, something our previous system could not do. Printing speeds are good, the system is robust and hassle-free.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “one unique aspect of this recent Emydex project in Botswana is that our team managed to configure, test and deploy a BMC-tailored version of our Packing and Labelling software all via the Emydex cloud, without anyone from Emydex visiting Botswana. Ian Carson, one of our International distribution partners, sourced and installed all the industrial hardware required, following which Emydex installed and tested the system remotely in conjunction both BMC staff as well as our distributor. Even though the BMC’s ‘live’ Emydex system is today hosted on a local production server, alternately there’s no reason why it couldn’t have remained hosted in the cloud.”
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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Euro Quality Lambs are live with Emydex Kill Line & Payments System

SHROPSHIRE-UK:
Euro Quality Lambs Ltd (EQL) is a lamb and sheep abattoir capable of processing 12,500 carcasses a week with onsite boning and further processing facilities. The majority of EQL production is sold in carcass form, both to the UK and throughout Europe.

EQL is one of the largest specialised and dedicated Halal meat processors in the UK.

In 2014 EQL recognized that their ageing production management system was in need of updating in order to satisfy both customer and legislative quality, traceability and veterinary requirements. After a detailed review of market suppliers of meat processing software in both the UK and Ireland, Emydex Technology were chosen to supply a new Lamb kill line system to EQL.

Installed over a number of separate project phases, the Emydex software installed was configured specifically for EQL, by tailoring the Emydex standard Lamb kill line system to deliver functionality from livestock procurement right through to carcass & box dispatch.

Hardware costs were kept to a minimum by reusing the existing scales, printers and barcode scanners. The only new hardware installed (supplied by Emydex industrial hardware partner MWS Ltd) being three new industrial touch-screen computer terminals. A single OCM was supplied to enable labelling of boxes (both offal and primals).

Rizvan Khalid (Senior Director) of Euro Quality Lambs commented “having met the Emydex team and seen all of the product development, project delivery and customer support teams based in Dublin, we felt confident that we could work with Emydex. Since then our project has been implemented in a timely manner, and has met and in some cases surpassed our expectations.” Khalid added “One differentiator with Emydex over the other factory floor systems we evaluated was the ability and ease with which the Emydex system can be modified and configured to work in line with our existing EQL business processes. We had many new ideas that we wanted to incorporate into our new system. The flexibility inherent in Emydex means everything is possible”

Commenting on the installation, David McMahon CEO with Emydex in Dublin said “Rizvan and the management team in EQL had a very clear vision of their system requirements from the outset of the project, that was the automated collection of production data from factory door-to-door, enabling accurate reporting on production yields, quality and traceability information in real-time.”
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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Allergen Labelling, upgrade to an Emydex Traceability system.

New EU Food Allergen Labeling Regulation

By December 13th 2014 all food labels in EU must identify allergens to comply with the European directive 1169/2011. The goal of the directive is to provide greater clarity to consumers on ingredients, nutrition and allergens. Manufacturers, retailers and food service operators need to clearly highlight food allergens within the ingredients list.

The EU directive 1169/2011 at a glance

Scope of the new regulation

  • Mandatory nutrition information on processed foods;
  • Mandatory origin labelling of unprocessed meat from beef, sheep, pigs and poultry;
  • Highlighting allergens e.g. peanuts or milk in the list of ingredients;
  • Better legibility i.e. minimum size of text: letter x height needs to be at least 1.2mm
  • Requirements on information on allergens also cover non pre-packed foods including those sold in restaurants and cafés.

The 14 substances and products that cause allergies or intolerances

  • Cereals containing Gluten
  • Celery
  • Crustaceans
  • Eggs
  • Fish
  • Nuts
  • Lupin
  • Milk
  • Molluscs
  • Mustard
  • Peanuts
  • Soybean
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Sulphur dioxide and Sulphites

This can be achieved using an Emydex Traceability labelling software system integrated with Nice Labels.

No longer do you need to define separate label templates for each product with fixed ingredient text. Emydex allows you to minimize the number of label templates required by allowing ingredient text to be stored as a variable against each product. The user will identify the allergens in the ingredient text and highlight them in bold text.

Mandatory origin labelling is accomplished by the traceability infrastructure inherent within the Emydex system. Country of Origin (and other traceability data) is recorded at Intake against an Internal Traceability Number (ITN). This ITN number then follows the products through the plant to the labelling process where the country of origin is extracted for printing on the label. When the traceability chain within the Emydex system is not complete (e.g. not full installations), the Country of origin can be selected from a drop down list at the labelling stations.

Example Label showing Allergen Ingredients highlighted in Bold

Example Label showing Allergen Ingredients highlighted in Bold

Just one more reason why Emydex is the correct choice for
real time on-demand labelling applications.

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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 sign many of Ireland’s Largest Fish Processors

Exhibiting at the Teagasc Meat@Gateways event being held in Ashtown, Emydex today announce they have signed up several new Fish processing customers in as many months.

Working in conjunction with BIM’s eLocate scheme, designed to encourage seafood enterprises to implement common standards of traceability, labelling and weighing through the implementation of Traceability software systems such as Emydex.

Emydex Fish News

Pictured with Tom Hayes TD, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine at the Teagasc – Food Innovation Gateway event are Emydex CEO, David McMahon and Emydex Product Director, James Grennan.

Emydex has so far signed up some of the largest processors in Ireland including Castletownbere Fisherman’s co-op, Glenmar Shellfish,  Goodfish and Eiranova, all located in Co. Cork, the Clogherhead Fisherman’s co-op in Louth, Galway & Aran Fishermans co-operative, Nolans Seafood and Rockabill in Co.Dublin.

Roll-out is well underway in most projects, with the Emydex Production Management System now operational in many seafood processing factories. The Emydex Fish factory system was designed in close collaboration with the GS1 Ireland and BIM, the latter whose aim is to implement barcode labelling and traceability standards across the seafood processing Industries in Ireland, as well as Europe. In addition, Emydex’s labelling at sea system is currently being trialed a number of Trawlers operating in the Irish Sea.

Emydex’s Fish Processing software system is designed to handle all types of seafood processing whether white fish or shellfish, fresh or frozen, and can manage the entire seafood processing supply chain from boats labelling product at sea, to boat landings, 3rd party intake, re-grading, production and processing such as filleting, smoking, labelling, warehousing and dispatch. The system also provides for real-time yield analysis and KPI reporting

The software system can integrate to 3rd party cold stores, financial systems as well as a large range of factory floor hardware devices such as indicator/scales, PC terminals and hand-held scanning devices used for sales order picking and dispatch as well as stock management.

teagasc-logo

More info on the Meat@gateways event can be found here

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