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Traceability System Live in La Rousse Foods

DUBLIN/BELFAST – IRELAND:
With operations located in Dublin and Belfast, La Rousse Foods specialise in the supply of fine foods to premium food establishments since 1992. Acquired by the Swiss-based food group Aryzta in 2015, the company has more than 1,300 corporate customers in Ireland, and have their own catering butchery, cheese-maturing room and chocolate lab. La Rousse offer a wide range of fresh, seasonal and innovative premium produce from a network of local and international producers.

La Rousse approached Emydex in 2014 with a requirement to implement a robust factory floor Traceability and Production management system to replace manual operations in both their Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. La Rousse were looking for a factory floor IT system that would provide them with real-time, accurate reporting on production, yields and Stocks, with full forwards and backwards food chain Traceability from factory door to door. For shop floor equipment La Rousse opted to implement Bizerba industrial weighing scales, harsh environment terminals as well as printers.

They were previously operating a paper based Traceability and Quality Assurance recording and reporting system, which was time consuming to both administer and report on. Stock control was also a manual operation which was labour intensive and time consuming. Previously the Cheese Operations area operated with a Microsoft Dynamics Nav system, whereby Purchase Orders for Intake were keyed directly into a Nav form running on an office PC located at Cheese Intake.

Weights and traceability information were later keyed in manually against the purchase orders. La Rousse identified a requirement for a software system that fully integrated with Navision in real time and replaced the manual in-put of weights and traceability information, as well as to manage the processing, packing, order picking and dispatch of cheeses to end-customers.

In parallel, La Rousse were planning to double the size of their existing catering butchery operations by building a new purpose-built state-of-the-art butchery on a site adjacent to their existing operation in Dublin. For this new operation, La Rousse also needed a factory floor system capable of production managing this new production facility from factory door-to-door.

Cheese Processing Software

Phase one of the project saw the rollout of Emydex’s Production Management Software to the Cheese Operations covering intake, processing & packing, picking & dispatch, returns both to/from suppliers and customers and QC Hold.  Due to the flexible nature of the software, Emydex were able to integrate to la Rousse’s existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, providing a seamless real-time interface between both systems.

Packing and Processing Software

Phase two was a much more substantial project seeing the rollout of Emydex’s Packing & Processing software module to the new catering butchery operation running on fifteen  Bizerba  industrial terminals, connected to  Bizerba Industrial Weighing scales and printers covering operations such as Intake, Debagging, Deboning, Dry Aging, Preparation Lines, Metal Detection and Packing. Emydex’s Warehouse management module is also installed, running on a number of intelligent handheld scanning terminals covering Internal stock movements as well as sales order picking and dispatch.

Today La Rousse now have a comprehensive Production management software system that is fully integrated with their back-office ERP system.

Commenting on the Emydex project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “La Rousse Foods were a great fit customer for Emydex to work with. A professional run company from the outset, the La Rousse Foods project team had a clear vision as to their system needs, with defined project objectives and requirements. They were insistent in seeking to understand the precise inputs and outputs to each and every stage of their production processes, with the result that today they have an Emydex system that provides both bullet-proof traceability processes, as well as accurate and real-time accurate reporting on Production, Yields and Stocks.”

Stuart Campbell, General Manager with La Rousse Foods added “Emydex have provided us with a robust Factory Floor Traceability and Production Management system for both our Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. Our Management team now have accurate real time reporting on production, yields and stocks as well as full forwards and backwards food chain traceability from factory door to door.”

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Fish Processing Software live in Fish Factory & 12 Trawlers

LOUTH – IRELAND:
Clogherhead Co-op based in Co. Louth on the East Coast of Ireland, is one of Ireland’s leading Seafood Processors. The Co-Op operate a twelve-strong fleet of modern fishing trawlers, as well as an impressive collective of skilled manpower. The Co-operative’s core offering is frozen at sea prawns, with the balance made up of whitefish species including monkfish, cod and hake.

The Co-Op supplies both domestic as well as export market countries including Italy, France, Spain and Holland. All of the vessels boast newly installed ‘frozen at sea’ equipment allowing Prawns to be handpicked and quickly frozen, ensuring exemplary quality, freshness and traceability. The boats can also stay at sea for longer, substantially decreasing the Co-op’s carbon footprint.

Traceability System

As part of the Irish Government’s ‘eLocate’ scheme launched to encourage the implementation of electronic traceability systems within the Irish seafood industries, Clogherhead Co-op approached Emydex with a requirement to replace their existing factory floor Production Reporting and traceability system, with a new modern software system that was flexible to make changes easily and quickly, and that could interface with the required Irish fishery body systems such as the SFPA.

Clogherhead also needed a system that would reduce time spent labelling products as they landed.  They sought a system that could be installed on their fleet of twelve trawlers allowing for frozen prawns to be barcoded and labelled at Sea with all required traceability information, enabling speedy and accurate landings into the factory on arrival at port.

Onshore Weigh Labelling

Emydex installed their factory floor software system into the Clogherhead factory including the Emydex Packing & Processing module used for weigh-labelling of product, as well as the Emydex Warehouse Management module used to manage and report on all factory stocks.

Offshore Weigh Labelling

In addition Emydex’s new labelling-at-sea software systems were installed on the Co-Ops fleet of boats to enable labelling of fixed weight prawns into both inner and outer boxes at sea.
The boat system also allows for the labelling of shellfish at the time and place of catch, capturing traceability information including catch date, catch area and use by date for example, meaning they just have to scan the boxes into intake on shore. Sean Gallagher, Emydex’s Project Manager commented “one of the challenges that Emydex faced with the roll-out of our boat system was that once the boat left the port, it was offline. This meant we could only iron out any issues later identified once the boat came back to shore. So we focused on ensuring we had the first boat running smoothly, before we rolled it out to a further few boats and then eventually all twelve in the fleet”. Lastly Emydex was configured with new functionality to allow the Co-Op to reconcile boats catches, with customer invoices, allowing payments to their suppliers, the boat owners.

Today Clogherhead Co-op are running the Emydex system within their factory from door-to-door. The bulk of product is landed from the boat fleet, pre-labelled at sea with bar-codes, facilitating speedy and accurate intake of frozen product. This means the Co-op no longer have to commit time and resources to the labelling of products as they arrive on shore, given they’re already labelled at sea.

Streamlined Intake Process

This new streamlined intake process allows Clogherhead to scan in the pre-labelled boxes directly to their stores and dispatch from there as required. Any product not labelled at sea can be weigh-labelled on a fixed position intake terminal located on the dry dock. The Emydex back-office system provides management and supervisors with real-time and accurate reporting on factory stocks, production as well as both forward and backward traceability reporting.

Commenting on the Emydex project, Paul Boyd, Managing Director with Clogherhead Co-op said “The key for me is that Emydex were able to provide Clogherhead with their standard fish system built in consultation with BIM, the SFPA, as well as the GS1, but allow Clogherhead to tailor and tweak the system to suit our specific needs and processes exactly. Aside from our old factory floor system, we also operated a bespoke-built boat invoicing and payments system. Emydex were able to configure and build into their standard Fish system, the very same functionality as our previous system, meaning we now have everything we need in a single system, supported in-life by the Emydex support team. After a year at sea, the Co-op that includes the factory and fleet of boats all see the efficiencies and savings realised from our new labelling-at-sea systems”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “This project included a first for Emydex, in that our software is now operating on a fleet of boats in an offline environment, but at the same time has proved very successful. Hopefully over time this is something that will be adopted by the fishing industry as a whole”

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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.

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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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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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Emydex live in MeatCo, Namibia

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:
Emydex today announce that their factory floor Data Capture, Production Reporting and Traceability system is now live and operational in MeatCo (Namibia)’s main beef processing plant in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

The beef primal deboning system in Windhoek is the first of an eight phase project that will see Emydex systems rolled out across MeatCo’s six beef processing operations in four separate locations in Namibia, as well as integrating Emydex to the Table Bay Cold Store in South Africa.

The two year, Euro 300k contract includes system rollout to Meatco’s two export approved slaughter and boning plants in Windhoek and Okahandja. Both plants are capable of slaughtering up to 1500cattle per day. The naturally grass fed Beef for which Namibia is famous is supplemented with Beef from Meatco’s own feed lot at Okapuka.

The Meat Corporation of Namibia (‘MeatCo’) also operate two further non-export abattoirs owned by the Namibian government but managed by Meatco, in Katima and Oshakati, which will both see Emydex installed. Finally a Wholesale beef processing plant and a cannery (both on the Windhoek site) will operate Emydex’s production management system.

Having pre-configured MeatCo’s customer specific business requirements in Dublin during February, Emydex staff were onsite in Windhoek during the Months of March and April, further configuring and customising the Emydex system to comply with the local market requirements of Meatco’s main export plant.

Phase one of the Windhoek project covered the carcass chills, carcass dispatch, boning hall, primal and carton packing, finished product stock, carton dispatch and integration to Meatco’s Sage X3 ERP system. Emydex are currently working on the Meatco Wholesale plant in Windhoek, soon to be followed by the Cannery and finally the Windhoek Beef slaughter line.

The company are targeting September 2014 as a likely roll out date for Windhoek system into Meatco’s second export plant in Okahandja.Due to the inherent flexibility and usability of the Emydex system Meatco are planning to roll out the Emydex system in the Oshakati and Katima abattoirs themselves,with remote support from Emydex as needed.

Commenting on the first phase of the Emydex system roll-out, AndriesTaljaardt,Meatco’s Windhoek Plant Manager said

“While slaughter continues uninterrupted, system upgrades are currently being effected at our Windhoek abattoir to improve the effectiveness of operations and maximise output in order to cater to growing customer demands.

Because of these demands, and the fact that preferences and specifications are continuously changing, we have to move into the direction which the market is moving. We have installed a new Production Management Software System (Emdyex) and layout in our Windhoek abattoir deboning department, which allows for a lot of value addition to our products. The Emydex system controls the volumes and all the information on the deboning floor and is responsible for the production recons and the labelling of products.

With the new layout, we have introduced an additional vacuum line and an additional frozen line. With that, we can now put up to 420 carcasses through deboning per day within normal working hours. For May, we are looking to put more than 6600 carcasses through deboning. Round about June, once the system is fully implemented, the number of carcasses we want to put through deboning is about 7000.”

In addition Andries said “We chose Emydex given it is a highly technological system that is used in many international abattoirs that adhere to European Union standards. Meatco is a pioneer in quality standards compliance in Namibia and is one of the first companies to achieve certification for international standards like ISO 9001 and HACCP.”

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out, Nico Weck, Group Chief Financial Officer at the MeatCo group said “since implementing Emydex’s shop floor barcode labelling and scanning system at our Windhoek primal deboning operations, our managers now have instant access to accurate reporting on our Yields, Stocks and Traceability”.

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