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Growth in 2020 despite Covid-19

Emydex expands in 2020 despite Covid-19 with year-on-year growth in sales

New office openings in Canada and New Zealand. New hires in Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. New customer signings and new plant go-lives.

Sales Growth

In a year dominated by the Covid 19 pandemic, global lockdowns, as well as restrictions on domestic and international travel, 2020 has seen another period of solid performance by Emydex, at a time when all staff in all market offices are working from home since mid-March.

In the first 9 months of 2020, Emydex recorded sales growth of over 10% compared with the same 9-month period last year. Emydex is pleased to see the business continue to grow throughout what are extremely challenging trading conditions.

Remote Working

Restrictions on the international movement of people have had the biggest impact on Emydex this year, with our customers and staff restricted in their ability to visit factories for business analysis engagements and project implementations in person.

South Africa

In September, Steynsburg Pork, a new Emydex customer, went live with the first phase of their Emydex system installation, at their new greenfield plant in South Africa. This new world-class farm and abattoir facility will process up to 4,800 sows per week once operating at full capacity.

Phase 1 of the project saw Emydex go-live with a “door to door” solution, including animal delivery, pig processing kill line, carcass management, into boning, case labelling, warehouse management and sales order picking.

The project was supported on-site by Emydex’s long-standing partner for the African market, Summit Process Solutions, and a special thanks to both Rodney and Jeffrey Macer-Wright for their help and assistance on the ground during the lead up to go-live, and several weeks post-go-live during the project stabilisation phase.

New Zealand

Around the same time, the Wilson Hellaby Group in North Island New Zealand went live with their first Emydex system, a state-of-the-art automated carton labelling system operating in the pack-off area of their beef and lamb boning halls of their Auckland Meat Processors (AMP) plant.

Unmanned labelling stations provide higher quality and consistency of labelling, eliminating errors, reducing reworks and recalls, whilst also reducing labour costs. Improvements in line speed and throughput mean that the automated pack labelling lines can process up to 18 cartons per minute. The system is fully integrated into the boning halls and provides real-time visibility of all stages of the production process for full traceability.

Emydex acknowledges the efforts of Ian Carson, Senior Consultant with Emydex Australia in our Brisbane office, who flew from Brisbane to Auckland and back during the lockdowns in both countries to support the Emydex go-live in the group’s Auckland Meat Processors (AMP) plant in Auckland.

Whilst onsite in AMP, Ian provided the eyes and ears for our system solutions and engineering teams working remotely on the project in our Dublin and Brisbane offices, relaying real-time video footage back to the engineers and testers working on the Emydex system solution on pre-go-live testing. Ian had to self-isolate for 2 weeks on both sides of the trip, going above and beyond the call of duty.

Canada

In Canada, the Emydex team have been working remotely with the Canadian Fishing Company (CANFISCO) to continue implementing Emydex functionality into the organisation remotely.

Having completed the first phase implementation covering Groundfish applications, the focus is now on applications for future improvements, including analysis of expected costs against actual costs, gross margin visibility at the different levels (including vessel, customer, and sales order analysis), as well as the automation of HACCP and QC processes and cold storage invoicing.

In addition, Emydex have also been completing requirements analysis for another multi-plant, major food manufacturing company in Canada. Although the first two factory requirements gathering visits were completed in person, the remaining factories have since been completed virtually using video conference technology again due to travel restrictions.

Expansion

To support growth in our two newest overseas markets, Emydex incorporated two new overseas companies in Canada and New Zealand in November and welcomed new hires to join both teams.

In Canada, Nathan Kelman joins the Emydex Canada team as a Senior Solutions Engineer. With over 8 years of programming experience working in software development roles around the Greater Toronto Area, Nathan will work on Emydex solutions development as well as support with our customers in Canada and the US

In New Zealand, Hermien Van den Berg joined the Emydex New Zealand team in September, as a Senior Project Manager, based in Auckland. With over 10 years’ experience working as a project manager for companies such as Coca-Cola in South Africa, Hermien will manage our growing New Zealand team, working remotely on customer projects including WHL and Silver Fern Farms.

(Jan 2021 update) Vadim Shegay and Wayne McRae also join the growing Emydex NZ team, both as a Senior Solutions Engineers working on ongoing Emydex projects spread over the North and South Islands in New Zealand.

Contact Sales in any of our Dublin, Brisbane, South Africa or Toronto offices

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Emydex growth in overseas markets

An Emydex company update as the world begins to unlock from the global Coronavirus pandemic that has severely affected the global economy since the beginning of this year.

Having just closed out our latest financial year-end to April 30th, Emydex is pleased to announce that the company grew by a further 20% year-on-year this year, following similar strong growth when the company grew by 30% last year.

In line with our company vision, over the past year, Emydex added further Tier 1 customers in our chosen markets, on the strength of which the company has expanded its presence in all the markets we serve, with further new hires added across the board, detailed below.

In addition, Emydex has added a suite of new products and modules to our factory floor solutions offerings, including a range of products focussed on larger multi-site meat, fish, and food processors. New products include the Emydex Enterprise Management System (EMS), Emydex Exchange as well a suite of group-level applications like Master Data Management for products, labels etc. In addition, consolidated group reporting, BI dashboards and a host of new web-based and Android applications are now available.
For further information read our New Year, New Products news story.

Europe

In Europe, following the successful implementation of Danish Crown’s Emdyex pilot project in the group’s Hörby plant in Sweden (read story), Emdyex are now live in the Danish Crown Scan Hide facility which processes premium hides for high-end products. We are also currently working with Danish Crown on several additional new plant roll-outs running in parallel, including Emydex factory floor systems for Danish Crown’s Aalborg plant in Denmark.

Emydex is also working with our long-standing customer, Kepak Group, to upgrade six of their beef and lamb primal processing plants in Ireland to our latest Emydex version 5 software. Also in Ireland, Ashbourne Meats have gone live with Emydex in their two processing plants in Roscrea and Naas (read story).

Africa

In Africa, building on our existing Emydex customer installations operating across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, Emydex are working on a new greenfield plant implementation for Steynsburg Pork in South Africa due to go live in Q3 2020.

In addition, Emydex has successfully implemented our Enterprise Quality Management System (read story) with new customers including Purecare in South Africa that are using our quality management system to complete scheduled services and emergency repairs on reverse osmosis machines which feed dialysis machines within hospitals throughout Southern Africa. Purecare management now has instant visibility of jobs that the technicians are completing in the field and can invoice for these services, including the quantities of spare parts, with ease.

Australia & New Zealand

Building on our earlier successes with Emydex customers such as O’Connor Beef in Victoria, Harvey Beef (read story) in Western Australia, and the Sunpork Group (read story) in Queensland, the Emydex team in our Brisbane office (read story) are currently working on a number of new customer project implementations including WAMMCO (Katanning) and Southern Meats (Goulburn), Mort & Company, as well as Silver Fern Farms and Wilson Hellaby/Auckland Meat Processors in New Zealand.

Our Emydex Australia office also welcomed new additions to the team including Karen Rogers, ex-Sastek/Cedar Creek as a business analyst working alongside Ian Carson, as well as Charles Joseph, Project Manager. Most recently, Emydex welcomed both Allan Nielsen and David Wang to the Emydex Australia software delivery team, both who join at the same time, coming from JBS Australia where they worked in JBS’s Brisbane software development team for 8 and 5 years, respectively. Utilising remote working technologies both Allan and David are integrating and collaborating successfully with the local Brisbane team, as well as the Emydex teams based in Dublin and Toronto while working from home remotely due to the Covid19 restrictions.

North America

In North America, Emydex continues to work with existing customers such as Donalds Fine Foods, with pork processing plants running Emydex box labelling systems at their plants in Richmond and Langley in British Columbia, as well as Moosejaw, Saskatchewan.

In BC Canada, Emydex is recently live in two of the Canadian Fishing Company’s (Canfisco) plants located in Richmond and Delta Pacific. Emydex is live within Canfisco’s two groundfish processing factories integrated into their MS Dynamics 365 ERP system.

In Wisconsin, US, Emydex are working with Strauss Brands, a large beef, veal, and lamb processor to implement Emydex box labelling systems on their factory floor integrated to their Dynamics 365 ERP system.

Supporting Terry McCorriston (ex-CSB systems) who has been Emydex’s agent in the region for the past 3 years, based in the Greater Toronto area of Canada, Emydex welcome Irish-born, John Keating to the Emydex North America team, as a senior engineer to support our growing North America customer base as well as our global 24x7 support team.

Looking Forward

With all countries in the markets that Emydex serves, who are beginning to take their economies out of lockdown post the pandemic crisis, Emydex look forward to a positive second half of the year. The company will focus our efforts on delivering on commitments to our customers in Europe, Africa, Australasia, and North America.

Emydex will also continue to further our advances with respect to our software platform helping to enable automation within food processing factories. Automation delivers labour savings as well as improved productivity and efficiencies. With the need to maintain social distancing in this new world order, more and more factories will look to automation, as a means of safeguarding their businesses against any further pandemics that might arise in the future. Machines don’t get sick, at the end of the day.

Contact Sales in any of our Dublin, Brisbane, South Africa or Toronto offices

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New Year rings in New Products

Introducing a host of new products built in conjunction with market-leading processors across the globe.

The Emydex new product development team, whose role is to future proof the Emydex solution, has been busy upgrading the Emydex framework as well as adding new products and modules into the software mix, particularly those focussed on larger multi-site meat, fish, and food processors.

Enterprise Management System

The new Emydex Enterprise Management system (EMS) centralises many of the existing Emydex modules operating at the plant level to the group corporate level. Being able to centrally control aspects of the Emydex system such as label designs, products, harvest destinations and carcass rules and well as bill of materials is vital to multi-site customers to maintain consistency, standardise, reduce error and improve efficiencies of managing and maintaining master data. Labour and cost savings are obvious. Perform a task once at group-level, rather than repeated many times at plant level, leading to inconsistencies.

The Emydex EMS system comprises of a mixture of new EMS windows applications as well as front-end web-based applications.

The EMS is a new software layer operating in the cloud (or customer hosted centrally) that connects external 3rd party software systems such as ERP systems, to local instances of Emydex production systems operating at the plant level. This allows customers to have one central place to integrate the ERP systems and other external systems to, with Emydex handling the responsibility and integrity of data flowing to and from individual plants.

EMS Exchange

The new EMS Exchange module (EXC) is the new highway that connects Emydex to multiple internal and external systems. This application allows Emydex super-users within our customers IT departments to configure integrations from Emydex to 3rd party systems including:

  • ERP integrations
  • Inter-site Transfers
  • 3PL Integration
  • Government Animal trace databases (AIMS, ScotEID, NLIS, NAIT)

Prior to EMS Exchange, all integrations from Emydex to 3rd party systems would have had to have been specially commissioned by Emydex for our customers, now this can be completed internally without any Emdyex involvement.

EMS Master Data Management

Emydex Master Data Management (MDM) allows customers to centrally control key business data with the ability to add, edit, save, approve and publish data from corporate offices all with version control and rollback functionality.

Key business users are also able to easily monitor plants acceptance and live versions of master data within the factory. Master data can include any data files created and maintained at a group level, that are also required at a plant level. This includes labels, products, destinations and carcass filters, vet inspection keyboard faults and cutting specifications.

The benefits of master data management include improved efficiency, improved decision making, a reduction in poor quality and erroneous data. It also creates business best practice standards for group-wide and plant level reporting.

EMS Application Deployment

Emydex App Deployment provides our multi-site customers with new web-based functionality to manage and deploy Emydex software updates across their group plants easily.

Emydex Quality Management System

In line with our stated company strategy that Emdyex software products are built by industry, for industry, our Enterprise Quality Management System (read EQMS story) first launched in 2018, continues to be developed with more and more features becoming available on foot of feedback and requests from our exiting EQMS installation base.

The recent focus has been delivering highly configurable product specification checks, label verification checks, as well as improving the off-line capabilities of the system to deal with scenarios where quality checks are being performed in areas with poor or no wi-fi coverage. Product specification configuration has been enhanced to be able to validate operators’ inputs against the configured product file to ensure compliance.

Warehouse Management System (Android)

Following Microsoft’s withdrawal from the mobile phone market after its failed merger with Nokia, Microsoft announced in 2017 that all versions of Windows Mobile operating systems (Windows Mobile 6 and Windows CE) commonly used on handheld mobile computers such as Motorola/symbol/Zebra, Honeywell and Intermec are 'end of life'. Microsoft is no longer building or supporting operating systems for such devices.

Since then, Emydex has been working on the redevelopment our Windows mobile application for handheld computers (our SDA application) to replace it with a brand-new Android version, written from scratch in the Xamarin programming language, that is known as our new XDA application.

All of the functionality previously available on the SDA version will be available on the XDA version, applications that typically cover the warehouse management features of a factory floor data capture system including:

  • Palletising
  • Stock movements
  • Stock Count, Stock Take & Stock Reconciliation
  • Inter-site transfer
  • Scan to/from Production
  • QC hold functionality
  • Sales Order picking
  • Carcass splitting
  • Chiller grading
  • Dry goods stock management

Emydex is currently testing our initial applications with customers in a production environment, to test for speed, robustness and durability.

 

For more information on any of these new product development features please contact [email protected]

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South Africa offers vast opportunities for Irish Agritech exporters

Ongoing uncertainty over Brexit has increased awareness among Irish companies of the need to diversify exports into new markets. In the agritech sector, where the consequences of a hard Brexit could be acute, South Africa offers vast opportunities for suppliers of agri-machinery and technology, as well as companies that offer livestock supplements and feed.

South Africa has the most diverse and productive agri-farming industry on the continent. In 2018, the overall agri value chain contributed 14pc to GDP, while 33pc of revenue earned from South African exports resulted from primary agri-produce. Additionally, the agri sector grew by 6.5pc in the third quarter of 2018.

Farming productivity and sustainability are key trends in South Africa and farmers are looking for new ways to improve their efficiency.

As they are willing to invest in innovative machinery and services that deliver value for money, the reputation that Ireland has developed for producing high-quality equipment has been well received by large commercial farmers.

At present, there is a demand for precision agricultural equipment, such as tractors, planters, balers, sprayers, storage, and soil-testing equipment, most of which are imported.

One Irish agri company, Abbey Machinery, moved into the market in 2018 after a sales enquiry led to one of its diet feeder machines proving its mettle in the country's demanding Highveld region.

Michael O'Grady, sales, marketing and business development manager at Abbey Machinery, said: "The dealer who contacted us had initially seen opportunity only for our feeders but one of the mega farmers also saw a need for one of our slurry tankers because it had more elements he could use than his current machine, which was also imported from Europe.

"There's lots of competition in South Africa - we're not the first foreign agricultural machinery manufacturer in the market - but farmers liked the quality of the machine, how well it was built, and how well it was able to handle the feed."

Easyfix also entered the South African market last year, offering rubber matting and flooring solutions via distributors.

PJ Burke, sales director of the Ballinasloe-based company, toured several farms and believes that farmers are willing to spend money on quality products that add value to their operations.

"We've equipped six farms with our products so far. Obviously there's competition with established products, but we've got a good hit rate and the feedback we're getting from the installations so far is very positive," he said.

"It's not an important market for us yet but it will be. The farmers that I've visited, eight to 10 of them, all have high-production herds, so there's a real opportunity for our range of products to get a foothold there."

Software company Emydex has grown its presence in South Africa over the last six years and a local partner has assisted the company in setting up 16 factories across Southern Africa.

Its tailored solutions and standard products are implemented across food-processing industries, including beef, ostrich and cold storage in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

"Emydex entered the South African market with our first factory floor implementation in 2013," said Shane Hayes, a business analyst who covers technical sales for Emydex.

"With assistance from Enterprise Ireland using market research, Emydex was able to establish a pipeline of prospects that fit with our vision and business model."

Emydex now plans to work in close collaboration with both Enterprise Ireland in Africa and their local partner to expand into new countries within the market, including Kenya and Nigeria.

Abbey Machinery, Easyfix and Emydex are among several Irish companies that are establishing the Irish brand in South Africa.

Enterprise Ireland will continue to support Irish agritech companies that enter and have presences in South Africa and other African countries.

Article written by Dr Ureshnie Govender - a senior market adviser in Life Science and Agritech for Enterprise Ireland in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

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Australia goes ‘green’ over Irish contracts worth $10m

More than $10 million in new Australian contracts including investments in ICT and emerging technologies - along with a new Melbourne office for Enterprise Ireland - has been announced as part of a Trade Mission from Ireland.

Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys - accompanied by 71 Irish companies from the fintech, medtech, high-tech construction, agritech, emerging technologies and ICT sectors - announced the deals.

“Australia is a mature and highly developed economy that offers significant opportunity for Irish exporters,” Humphreys said in announcing the deals.

“Despite the long distance to market, Australia’s open economy, significant infrastructure expenditure and strategic location at the doorstep of Asia has led many Irish companies to enter and perform strongly in the market. The size and scope of this trade mission demonstrate that now more than ever the importance of this marker.”Heather Humphreys -Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys -Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation

Humphreys said the deals - and the opening of the Melbourne office of Enterprise Ireland - are a direct result of continued growth in export to Australia and New Zealand from Ireland to the sum of $404 million last year - an increase of 43 per cent over the past three years.

On the technology front, the deals are as follows:

- Kingspan Insulated Panels announces a $8 million capex investment for a new state-of-the-art machine that will operate at its factory in Greater Western Sydney.

-Solgari and Barhead strike a deal to bring Solgari’s Dynamics 365 All-Channel Solution to Barhead Financial Service & Retail customers in Australia. The partnership gives Solgari access to Microsoft’s global partner network and millions of potential customers.

-Emydex announces a contract with Harvey Beef, the largest meat processing company in WA, to provide its food processing software.

-Eppione announces a contract to license oits software to HR consulting firm Talenting.

-Combilift announces a contract with E Store Logistics, which is set to become the second largest user of the Combilift Aisle Master product and largest private user across A/NZ.

Humphreys said 320 Irish companies are now exporting to Australia - companies that employ over 25,000 people in Ireland.

“Our ambition is to grow client exports to $574 million by 2020. I am delighted to lead this Trade and Investment Mission to Australia and engage in an extensive program of activity which focuses on supporting Irish companies to expand exports into this significant market," Humphreys said.

Article written by Jennifer O'Brien (CIO)

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Emydex South Africa Market Update

Over the course of 2018 the Emydex Technology delivery team in Dublin worked in close partnership with Summit Process Solutions, Emydex’s local market agent based in Johannesburg, to successfully deliver three new cold store projects for three new customers based in South Africa. These included the Emydex Cold Store Warehouse Management System complete with required hardware to QK Cold Store South Africa located in Johannesburg, as well as to Table Bay Cold Storage located in Cape town.

A third Emydex system was commissioned for GPS Food Group RSA, also located in Cape Town. The GPS Food Group Cold Store implementation was extended later in 2018 to add further Emydex Production and Traceability reporting modules covering their Value-Added processing operations in the same plant.

The addition of these three new customers, bring the number of Emydex customers to nine in the Southern Africa region.

Stock Maps

Some of the Cold Store Systems delivered include the latest version of Emydex’s Stock Maps functionality. This new functionality enables the Cold Store to view and search against a visual representation of their stock by drilling down through areas and warehouse locations and interrogating stock via graphical views of racks, rows and bays. This latest version of Emydex Stock Maps System now enables Emydex customers to configure, build and maintain Stock Map views themselves in-house via the easy-to-use Stock Map configuration editor.

Distributed Warehouse System

The Emydex Web Application development team in Dublin is nearing completion of a brand-new Distributed Warehouse System (DWS).  DWS is a web-based application for Cold Stores to provide remote access to their customers to run self-service queries on their stock, send ASNs and even Sales Orders via the web client to the Cold Store for action.

Other customers include Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco), the largest beef processing operation in Namibia.  Meatco is running Emydex in several of their processing, slaughter, de-boning and further processing plants, as well as a mobile Abattoir operating in the Northern Namibian region.

In addition, the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) is similarly the largest beef processing operation in Botswana and operates with Emydex’s Packing & Processing software modules at its three processing facilities in Lobatse, Francistown and Maun.

In South Africa, Klein Karoo Meat - the world’s largest Ostrich processor is situated along the garden route between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.  Klein Karoo Meat make use of Emydex’s Shop Floor, Production Control and Traceability Reporting Systems which are running in their three slaughter and de-boning plants based in Oudtshoorn, Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet.

16 Plants Operating Emydex Software in Southern Africa

In total there are now sixteen separate plants operating Emydex Software in Southern Africa, the bulk of which were delivered in partnership with Summit Process Solutions.  Summit Process Solutions integrates weighing, labelling, inspection, processing, data capture, factory floor software and IT systems to create tailor made solutions for companies in Southern Africa.  Combined with their vast range of industrial equipment like waterproof - computer terminals, scanners, scales, printers etc., they are a perfect match for Emydex’s Software Systems.

Commenting on the Emydex’s success in the region, David McMahon, Emydex CEO based in Dublin said “the success of Emydex in Southern Africa is very much dependent on our local partner Summit Process Solutions.  Not only do they supply, install and support all the industrial waterproof hardware required to run the Emydex Systems, but their professional services team assist with the planning, scoping and gathering of specifications required before the Emydex System is configured by the Emydex Dublin team.  When the time comes for system testing and go-live, Summit are again on hand to assist with preparations for go-live including testing, training and support.  It’s an ideal partnership where each side provide complementary products, services and skills. The Summit team’s twenty plus years of operating in the African region means they have the domain knowledge and expertise needed to have meaningful discussions with both customers and prospective customers alike.”

Rodney Macer-Wright, Summit Process Solutions Managing Director said “In the Southern African market, Emydex offers a perfect software package for our customers as they can offer a complete solution from raw material intake right through to finished product despatch or a standalone system such as the Emydex Quality Management System.

In a changing market such as ours, it is extremely important that a factory floor software keeps up with current trends. With Emydex’s focus being their factory floor software, they are continuously making improvements. They understand the customer’s requirements and are extremely agile in making changes and improvements to the Emydex software solution in order to streamline the customer’s production process. The partnership between Emydex and Summit Process Solutions offers our customers a proven solution with a great match of software and hardware”

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