Kepak Group has been recognised with a Customer Milestone Plaque celebrating twenty years of partnership with Emydex. The plaque was presented to Jeremy O’Callaghan, Group CIO at Kepak, recognising a relationship that has grown from individual plant projects into an important part of production operations across the Group. Over that time, the partnership has supported Kepak’s continued growth, helping strengthen production control, traceability and consistency across multiple sites.
Kepak was there close to the beginning. In Emydex’s first four years, when the company was five software engineers in an office in Damastown, the original kill line and boning hall software was built in collaboration with a small group of Irish and UK red meat processors. Kepak was one of them.
About Kepak Group
Founded in 1966 from a butcher’s shop in Dublin, Kepak is a family-owned food business delivering high-quality meat, prepared consumer foods and foodservice solutions at scale. Operating across Ireland and the UK, the business works in close partnership with customers, farmer suppliers and partners across the food chain. Its portfolio includes established brands such as Rustlers and Big Al’s, and Kepak was a founding member of Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme.
How it started
Before Emydex, Kepak was running production and billing systems built in-house. They were not integrated, they leaned heavily on a small number of key people, and they gave the business no real-time view of stocks, yields or traceability.
The production management platform went live at Clonee in 2006, followed by the beef processing system in 2009. It created clearer links across animal intake, processing, stock management, traceability, warehousing and dispatch, giving teams greater visibility and control throughout the production process.
From plant projects to a group platform
By 2010 Emydex was running end to end across Kepak’s beef plants at Clonee, Kilbeggan, Hacketstown, Athleague, Ballymahon and Cork, integrated to Microsoft Dynamics AX, with lamb kill lines following. Carcass management gave the business accurate stock from the point of kill through boning and dispatch. Work order control meant nothing could be processed on the floor without an order on the system. Warehouse scanning gave real-time stock down to scan level, with operators warned of discrepancies while they were still picking the order rather than after the fact.
The system was also successfully adopted on the factory floor, with experienced operators and supervisors quickly becoming confident in using it as part of their day-to-day work.
Speaking as part of Emydex’s own 20th anniversary in 2024, Jeremy O’Callaghan, Group CIO at Kepak, described what the years had added up to:
Emydex have been an integral part of the system delivery team for Kepak Group for almost two decades, supporting us in our business growth across multiple sites in both Ireland and the UK. They have worked with us through many challenges along the way.”
Twenty years on
Twenty years ago, our focus was on creating a more consistent, real-time view of production across sites that each operated differently. Since then, the platform has evolved alongside Kepak, supporting greater visibility, control and traceability as our business has grown. Emydex has worked closely with our teams throughout that journey, adapting with us and helping us respond to changing operational needs.”
Jeremy O’Callaghan, Group CIO, Kepak Group
A great deal has changed in food processing over the past two decades. What a processor needs from a factory floor system has changed rather less: reliable data, clear control, and traceability that holds up when somebody asks for it. Twenty years of partnership reflects a shared commitment to reliability, continuous improvement and practical innovation. As Kepak has grown and evolved, Emydex has continued to work alongside its teams to support the changing needs of the business.
Kepak 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 Jeremy and everyone at Kepak Group, and thank you for the trust you have placed in our team over 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.
