Silver Fern Farms has extended its use of Emydex into venison processing, with successful go-lives at two New Zealand plants in five weeks. Rotorua went live on 8 June 2026, followed by Kennington, near Invercargill, on 6 July. The two sites are the seventh and eighth Silver Fern Farms plants to run Emydex, and mark the first venison implementation in Emydex’s 22-year history.
A partnership that keeps growing
Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading processor, marketer and exporter of premium lamb, beef and venison. The company produces around 30% of the country’s red meat across 14 plants, and has been an Emydex customer since 2019.
The first phase of the partnership covered beef. Emydex was rolled out plant by plant across the beef network, with each site bringing its own processing flows, throughput and reporting needs. When the Pacific site went live in 2025, all six beef plants were running Emydex across the full primary butchery workflow, from the kill floor through liveweight and EID capture, grading, inspection and carcass-level traceability. The legacy CRS system was retired.
Just as important, those six deployments settled a way of working: close collaboration between Emydex and site teams, phased testing, and a structured go-live that keeps production running. Venison put that model to the test.
Building venison processing from the ground up
Venison was a new species for the Emydex platform, so there was no existing configuration to lean on. The Emydex team worked with Silver Fern Farms subject matter experts to define the workflows, product structures and data capture requirements that deer processing needs.
Both plants operate a manual chain with four Emydex data capture stations on the factory floor:
- Bolt station: records each animal at the start of processing
- Liveweight and EID station: captures live weights and electronic identification for lifetime traceability
- Inspection station: records veterinary and quality inspection outcomes on the line
- Grading station: captures carcass grades and weights, feeding supplier payments and yield data
Each station feeds the plant’s kill line and traceability systems as the chain runs.
Two go-lives in five weeks
Rotorua came first, and with it the work of a first-of-species implementation: new workflows, new product structures and extensive testing before the switch. The go-live itself was straightforward. Silver Fern Farms reported that the system settled in quickly, and the few minor issues that surfaced were resolved by the Emydex support team within days.
Kennington was built on the configuration proven at Rotorua and went live five weeks later. For a processor running multiple sites, this is the point that matters: once a species is proven on the platform, the next plant is faster to deliver, carries less risk and starts returning value sooner.
Rotorua
Kennington
Real-time visibility with Emydex BI
Both venison plants run Emydex Business Intelligence, now standard across the Silver Fern Farms network. User access for every site is managed centrally from a single point, which cuts administration and keeps permissions consistent as the network grows.
On the operations side, teams work from live dashboards rather than end-of-day reports. A Kill List view shows what is on the day’s kill and how it is progressing. A Carcass Summary breaks down carcasses by destination with weights and averages. A Contamination dashboard tracks rates against the government standard in real time, giving managers the chance to act before a problem grows. Daily Kill Sheets and carcass reports cover traceability and compliance across both sites.
Across a network of our size, the real value is consistency. Emydex gives our teams a shared operational picture, so they spend less time pulling data together and more time acting on it. Decisions that previously depended on end-of-day reporting can now happen much closer to the floor, and Rotorua and Kennington were able to start delivering that value from the early stages of go-live.”
Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer, Silver Fern Farms
Looking ahead
With venison now proven across two sites, the groundwork is in place to extend the species further across the Silver Fern Farms network, and the wider programme of collaboration continues.
Emydex provides production management, traceability and business intelligence software to meat, fish and food processors worldwide. If you are evaluating MES or traceability systems for venison, beef or any other species, get in touch to request a demo.
