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Global Impact: How Emydex Software is Transforming the Pork Processing Industry

Emydex Technology has been a cornerstone in the pork processing industry, providing Pork Processing Software solutions that enhance operational efficiency and traceability for pork processors worldwide.

With over 100 years of collective experience supplying factory-floor Traceability and production control software systems to Pork Processors in primal, secondary, and value-added Pork processing plants operating across Ireland, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Emydex has established itself as a leader in the field.

Here are some highlights of Emydex’s successful partnerships over the past 20 years:

Dawn Pork & Bacon

  • Location: Co. Waterford, Ireland
  • Activity: Primal Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2006
  • Duration: 18 years
  • Achievements: Utilises Emydex software for packing, warehousing, dispatch, sales order processing, and yield reporting. Customised yield reports for specific requirements.
  • Testimonial:
    “The Emydex suite of software plays an integral part in the day-to-day running of our business. The user-friendly system allows production staff to engage fully with it. As a result, the information the system produces is extremely reliable, enabling us to maintain tight control of our yields, stock management, and supply chain.”
    – Billy Leslie, Financial Controller, Dawn Pork & Bacon
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Mallon’s Foods

  • Location: Monaghan, Ireland
  • Activity: Value-Added Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2012
  • Duration: 12 years
  • Achievements: Implemented a scalable and flexible production management system covering order control, stock control, recipe formulation, traceability, quality control, and yield control.
  • Testimonial:
    “The key point about Emydex software is the standard module offerings are very comprehensive and cover almost everything we need, and if they don’t have specifically what we need, it’s not a major hassle to change it. With the software and the excellent backup and service from all the staff in Emydex, we feel we have the complete package.”
    – Paul Kearney, Mallon’s Foods
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Oliver Carty

  • Location: Co. Athlone, Ireland
  • Activity: Value-Added Pork & Bacon Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2011
  • Duration: 13 years
  • Achievements: Implemented Emydex’s Warehouse Management System covering Goods Intake, Dispatch, and Stock Control. Fully integrated with Scanvaegt production lines and financial systems for real-time sales order processing.
  • Testimonial:
    “Emydex’s software development team has an in-depth understanding of real-life production issues and continues to offer innovative solutions to Oliver Carty.”
    – Justin Lennon, IT Manager at Oliver Carty and Family
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Rosderra Irish Meats Group

  • Location: 4 plants in Ireland
  • Activity: Primal Pork Processor (2 plants) and Value-Added Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2014
  • Duration: 10 years
  • Achievements: Implemented Emydex’s Warehouse Management System in three phases, covering Kill line, Boning Hall, Packing, and Dispatch. Fully integrated with their ERP System.
  • Testimonial:
    “Emydex has demonstrated reliability, consistently meeting deadlines and delivering results that have had a tangible impact on our business. Their customer support team is knowledgeable, responsive, and proactive.”
    – Louis Ennis, Group Financial Accountant at Rosderra Irish Meats
    read full story

Staunton Foods

  • Location: Co. Waterford, Ireland
  • Activity: Primal Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2013
  • Duration: 11 years
  • Achievements: Implemented Emydex’s Pig Kill Line and livestock payments system. Significant business growth attributed to Emydex’s support and expertise.
  • Testimonial:
    “During the last 10-year period, we have seen our business grow substantially… this growth would not have been possible without the help and support of Emydex. The team at Emydex were always available to lend their support and expertise to ensure the end goals were met.”
    – John O’Regan, Sales Manager at Staunton Foods Ltd
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Sunpork

  • Location: Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia
  • Activity: Primal Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2019
  • Duration: 5 years
  • Achievements: Developed a state-of-the-art, fully automated kill line system. Integrated RFID tracking for real-time carcass identification and traceability.
  • Testimonial:
    “The new pork kill line system is significantly more efficient, reducing manpower and doubling output. We have more data capture points on the factory floor to collect real-time manufacturing information, and we have replaced many manual tasks such as populating spreadsheets.”
    – Geoff Miller, Group CFO and Company Secretary, Sunpork Group
    read full story

Wilson Hellaby Ltd

  • Location: Ruakura, New Zealand
  • Activity: Primal Pork Processor
  • Emydex Customer Since: 2022
  • Duration: 2 years
  • Achievements: Delivered customised solutions for mission-critical areas, integrating seamlessly with hardware and software from other providers.
  • Testimonial:
    “Emydex’s innovative approach to software development has solved challenges within our industry where off-the-shelf solutions just don’t exist. Building solutions that cleanly interface and cooperate with hardware and software from other providers is a forte of the Emydex team. We’re looking forward to working with them in the future to improve our business capabilities.”
    – Justin Lee, Chief Financial Officer, Wilson Hellaby Ltd
    read full story

Emydex’s commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction has made them a trusted partner for pork processing companies globally, driving growth and success. 

In 2024, Emydex is proud to share that our Pork Processing customers have an accumulated 103 years of collective tenure, working with Emydex in over 20 plants around the world. This is a testament to the strong relationships we have built and the trust our customers have in our products and services. We are grateful for their continued support.

 

Company
Industry
Plants
Location
Emydex
Customer
Years
Rosderra
Irish Meats		 Pork Primal
Processor		 4 4 plants in Ireland 2014 – 2024  10
Dawn Pork
& Bacon		 Pork Primal
Processor 		 1 Waterford, Ireland  2006 – 2024 18
Staunton Foods Pork Primal
Processor 		 1 Cork, Ireland  2013 – 2024 11
Kepak McCarren Pork Primal
Processor 		 1 Cavan, Ireland 2016 – 2024 8
Cranswick Plc  Pork Primal
Processor 		 1 Ballymena, UK 2016 – 2024  8
Sunpork
Group		 Pork Primal
Processor 		 1 Queensland,
Australia		 2019 – 2024  5
Pork Processor  Pork Primal
Processor 		 4 4 plants in Canada 2016 – 2024 8
Ruakura Meat
Processors		 Pork Primal
Processor 		 2 Auckland,
New Zealand 		 2022 – 2024 2
Oliver Carty Value Added
Pork Processor		 2 Athlone, Ireland  2011 – 2024 13
Arthur Mallon   Value Added
Pork Processor		 1 Monaghan, Ireland 2012 – 2024 12
O’Brien Fine Foods  Value Added
Pork Processor		 2 Rathowen & Timahoe,
Ireland		 2016 – 2024 8

If you want to learn more – contact Emydex in any of our global market offices in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North America

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Dawn Pork & Bacon, 17 years on Emydex and counting

Dawn Pork & Bacon is one of Ireland’s leading Pork producers, operating out of Grannagh, Co Waterford in Ireland. May 2023 will see the 17th year Anniversary since Emydex first started working with Dawn Pork & Bacon, in 2006.

Emydex was founded in April 2004, so Dawn P&B was one of the very first customers to go live with an Emydex software system to manage, control and report on all their production, stocks, yields, and traceability requirements.

Continuous Improvements

Initially launched on Emydex Version 3 of the application, the system has been upgraded on a number of occasions to keep the software solution in check with the latest technical developments released by Emydex in both the core system, as well as the various industry modules in use. Industry modules operated by Dawn P&B cover their entire factory floor processes, door-to-door including pig kill line and payments, carcass stock management, into-boning, boning hall management, box packing and palletizing, sales order picking, and dispatch.

In 2009 the system was extended to add an Emydex weighbridge system for Dawn to manage truck deliveries to the plant used to verify dispatch weights against weights at the bridge, eliminating potentially costly mistakes.

24/7 Support

Alan Doocey, Dawn Pork & Bacon’s IT Manager at the time later relocated with his family to Australia, eventually ending up working for Emydex Australia, where he still works today on the Emydex Australia customer support team. Alan provides real-time technical helpdesk support to Emydex customers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as other Emydex customers around the globe who signed up to a 24x7x365 support agreement. The 24x7 team is made up of support engineers like Alan in Brisbane, in addition, to support staff in New Zealand, Canada, and Dublin.

Commenting on the successful working relationship between both companies over such a long tenure, Billy Leslie, Financial controller with Dawn Pork & Bacon said

We in Dawn Pork & Bacon are delighted to celebrate a very successful partnership of 17 years with Emydex in 2023. The Emydex suite of software plays an integral part in the day-to-day running of our business. The system is very user-friendly allowing production staff to fully engage with it. As a result, the information the system produces is extremely reliable enabling us to maintain tight control of our yields, stock management, and our supply chain.

We look forward to continuing our partnership with Emydex in the future. A future that will include increased regulatory control and sustainability reporting challenges within the Agri-Business sector. In partnership with Emydex, we are confident that these challenges can be overcome.

If you want to learn more – contact our Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North American offices

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Farmer Bookings & Feedback via Livestock Portal

Farmer Bookings & Feedback via Livestock Portal

A new web-based appointment booking and feedback system, reduces paperwork, facilitates easier appointments, and provides transparent feedback to producers and farmers in real-time and accurately

Feb 2022

The supply of livestock from the producer to the meat processor is underpinned by the consistent supply of livestock of the correct quality, correct inspection and optimal grading of these animals while processing in meat processing factories. This is applicable to Beef, Lamb and Pork/hog producers and processors. 

This relationship can now also be built-upon and strengthened with the use of a transparent data transfer from the processor back to the producers via a new Emdyex web-based appointment booking and feedback system. This is achieved via Emydex standard APIs that interact directly with Emydex factory floor MES Solutions running on Kill lines in Abattoirs and Slaughterhouses around the world. 

 

Animal Health Feedback 

Farmers could have the ability to make bookings and appointments, receive Health feedback information, download their financial information, as well as receive their remittances digitally through the Portal, reducing unnecessary paper documentation and helping both sides work towards their sustainability goals.

To facilitate the seamless exchange of producer/Processor data, Emydex has developed a comprehensive suite of secure web APIs. These are designed to simplify the livestock supply from producer to processor and offer the ability to surface kill line and grade data about the supplied livestock back to the producer.

 

Farmer Appointments & Bookings

Authorised agents and suppliers can book appointments to supply their livestock to the processor directly using the API calls embedded in a web portal which can be run via a web browser on a desktop PC or mobile device. This makes the process of selling livestock to the processor far simpler than initiating a booking via other means, eliminating double handling of data and reducing the opportunity for errors in the process.

The Emydex Supplier WebAPI Module consists of several API endpoints that can be called to perform various operations, such as registering new suppliers and livestock delivery appointments directly within Emydex, providing details of any generated payments and retrieving relevant data collected on the Emydex kill line. 

 

Visibility of Grading & Quality Data

This can include the data from the Emydex veterinary inspection stations, grading data and if applicable data from chiller grading processes (MSA). The data retrieval from the kill line via the APIs can be performed at a per delivery or lot level or down to the individual sides of the carcasses forming part of a particular delivery or lot. This offers much greater visibility of the grading and quality data registered to each carcass by the processor and provides comprehensive feedback to the supplier on the condition of the livestock supplied to the factory. How each carcass was graded informs how each carcass was ultimately priced for payment. This can assist the supplier in improving the quality of supplied livestock to meet the producers’ requirements.

By combining the Emydex Kill Line, Central Animal Payments System and Livestock API modules in one wholistic solution, Beef, Lamb and Pork livestock suppliers and processors can achieve a higher level of digital integration when considering the supply of animals to the plant and also receiving performance feedback on the quality of supply and pricing calculations applied to the delivery.

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Emydex CAPS off year with Livestock Payments System

Emydex CAPS off the year with a new Livestock Settlements System

For most Meat processors, the procurement of raw materials, especially Livestock, is by far the largest variable cost for the business to manage. Therefore, being able to ensure the Accurate andTimely payment for this stock is a key requirement. Many Meatprocessors choose to differentiate themselves from their competitors based on the speed and accuracy of payment to their suppliers. Emydex’s recently redeveloped Central Animal Payment System (CAPS) is designed to meet this requirement specifically, as well as to provide functionality that provides parameter-driven flexibility to meet all current and future requirements.

 

Calculating Animal Settlements

The key to the success of the system is the ability to design animal payment ‘methods’ that can be added to the system as a component to suit individual customer needs without modifying the existing system. This means that if there is a requirement for a new way of paying a supplier, whether it be based on a contract, supply volumes, average market process, or a complex grid-based system, these can be developed and ‘locked in’ to the existing system as a snapshot for later retrieval.

As standard, the Animal Payment System caters to multiple payment grids where any data from the kill floor or kill ‘lot’ (delivery) can be incorporated into multiple axes of a grid to generate a payment.

This might be a weight range and fat score or a meat marbling score and dentition range i.e. virtually any combination of data elements that can be measured as part of livestock processing.

Multiple grids can be used to accumulate values such as a supplementary ‘bonus’ value or to allow a record to pass to a second grid if the criteria for the first grid e.g. a carcass that is too heavy or old for the first payment grid. This ‘fall through’ process can be repeated until a grid that matches is finally found.

 

Cattle Payment Invoicing and Adjustments

The system is capable of producing recipient-created tax invoices (RCTI) for suppliers (farmers), third-party agents, commissioned livestock buyers, transport companies and service or contract kills (an accounts receivable transaction rather than the usual accounts payable).

User-defined adjustments, again using virtually any of the data in the system, can apply adjustments to this invoice to either deduct money for items such as carcass faults, levies, transport costs etc. or apply a rebate such as a ‘skin’ or hide credit. These can be applied automatically using pre-defined ‘settlement schemes’ (groups of adjustments) or added manually on a case-by-case basis.

 

Carcass Costings

As a carcass is produced, the system can calculate the cost for the carcass per kg (or lb) by running each carcass record through the various livestock settlement processes to generate the total cost, so not only is the cost of the purchase from the supplier included but also the cost of freight, commissions etc.

Costs that do not appear on any invoice such as a kill fee can also be included if required. This allows for carcasses to be costed before the payment is finalised so if the carcass is disposed of via a sale or boning process, the cost can be reported as part of the input to the process for accurate costings. Alternatively, carcass costs can be updated once the payment is finalised.

 

Animal Payment Reporting

Invoice and costing data can be updated to an in-house or 3rd party provider ERP or Financial system for payment with full audit trails and costing audits available in the CAPS system. Standard reports are available and data from the payment system can be surfaced using the in-built Emydex Business Intelligence (BI) tool.

Kill data can be from Emydex kill floor systems or up-uploaded from multiple sources and sites to allow for a centralized system for consolidated processing and reporting.

 

Centralised Payments catering for large Enterprises

Given the flexibility and extensibility of the system, current and future needs can easily be met with an ‘out of the box’ system. Once configured the system can generate payments, email all parties involved and update costs and financial systems at the push of a button. Payment processes that would traditionally take hours can be streamlined and the labour requirements significantly reduced.

Accurate costings allow for true profitability costing as the input costs to sales and further processing are readily available.

With the ability to run as a centralised process taking data from many sources, both large enterprises to single site operations can all gain tremendous advantages from the new system.

 

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North America offices.

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SunPork scales new heights

How Emydex helped SunPork expand their Swickers Kingaroy operation to become the biggest, fastest, highest quality pork processing operation in Australia.

Meet the client

Through Swickers Kingaroy, SunPork is the largest pig processor in all of Australia, handling 900,000 pigs every year to produce 18% (42 million kilos) of the nation’s pork. The group is proud to be Australian farmer-owned and a direct employer of 1,400 people across the country.

In addition to the domestic market, SunPork exports 7 million kilos of pork to seven other countries and creates 140 million meals worldwide annually. They do this through 37 Australian farms in three states and six New Zealand farms on the two islands. They also have three feed-mills, a directly owned abattoir, major interest in a second facility, as well as two value-add facilities.

The opportunity

Following the rebuild of the Export Boning Room after a fire at SunPorks’s Swickers abattoir in Queensland, the group began an additional AUD$ 64m (Euro €40m) investment in a new state-of-the-art facility in 2016. It set out to become the most efficient pork processing line in Australia with a capacity to process up to 750 pigs per hour, whilst maintaining a relentless focus on quality.

In December 2019, the SunPork Group completed the Swickers abattoir expansion in Kingaroy, located three hours outside Brisbane, Queensland, creating more than 200 jobs in the process.

“Over the past 18 months Swickers has constructed the most advanced pork abattoir in Australia, and certainly one of the best in the world. Many producers and wholesalers will rely on the efficiency and quality standards in our plant to maintain and develop their business well into the future. This facility is a cornerstone of the SunPork business and we now have foundations that will underpin our long-term growth strategies.”

Dr Robert van Barneveld, SunPork Group CEO and Managing Director

So how do you become the fastest and most efficient pork processing facility in the country? You bring in one of the world’s leading providers of factory floor software for food processors. You bring in Emydex.

What we did

The Sunpork project began with the design and development of a new state-of-the-art, fully automated kill line system for the Swickers processing plant, in line with Smart Manufacturing (Industry 4.0) best practice. 

The main goal of this project was to interface the Emydex MES to an automated factory floor system consisting of a network of RFID readers and sensors, as well as multiple (20) in-line automated machines, connected to Emydex via the PLC layer. This meant integrating with equipment supplied by Frontmatec, Denmark, that included a carcass opener, automated splitting, AutoFom grader and a carcass stamp printer. 

Other equipment included a PorkScan grader, automatic track scales as well as LED/Light and gate control systems, in addition to other devices to manage routing. The use of multiple real-time vet inspection and grading stations also controlled the flow and routing of carcasses.

RFID integration required the design and build of standard integrations (APIs) to interact with RFID tracking systems on the kill floor. The RFID system provides real-time carcass identification and tracking, enabling full traceability of the carcass throughout processing.

As part of the project, the Emydex engineering team also designed and built a new centralised communication service, called the Data Communication Interface (DCI). DCI eliminates the need for individual terminals to have direct communication with the various integrated hardware and allows terminals to receive the data input in a unified format via this single central communication point. 

The project also delivered additional new innovative systems for stock delivery and pen management, automated carcass routing and an automated chiller sortation system based on configurable business rules.

Going Live

The system began commissioning at the SunPork Swickers plant in July 2019.

The results

The effects were immediate, and the system keeps improving day by day.

“The new kill line is significantly more efficient than the previous line, and it will continue to improve as we move forward. Manpower has reduced in terms of two shifts to one, while the new floor will allow us double output. There are two real and obvious benefits that Emydex has brought to SunPork. One, we have more data points where we can collect manufacturing information from around the floor and two; we have replaced many manual tasks such as populating spreadsheets.

Geoff Miller, Group CFO and Company Secretary

“What makes the Swickers plant unique is that it not only processes product on behalf of SunPork, but also provides a service kill for other companies in the pork industry and so had to have a lot of flexibility not usually found in normal processing facilities. The need to meet the requirements of each customer utilising the service provided by the plant meant Emydex had to deliver a system that could not only operate at very high speed, but also deliver the ability to change the way each customer’s pigs were prepared and to signal this in real-time to the operators on the production floor”

Ian Carson, Technical Sales Director, Emydex Australia

What’s next?

The next phase is to refine and perfect Emydex’s ‘Factory of The Future system’ on the ground at Swickers and then roll Emydex systems out to further processing functions at Kingaroy and SunPork’s other facility in Queensland.

In other's words

“We gave Emydex a very tough ask to design and build a system for a kill floor that itself had not even been physically designed yet. Many other system developers would have walked away at various points in the project when things got tough but Emydex regularly went above and beyond the call of duty and I have huge respect for them for that. Their guys were out here working seven days a week and were as invested, committed as we were. It was a new world for both of us and I can’t fault them at all.”

Geoff Miller, Group CFO and Company Secretary

“The Emydex team has been superb… from the beginning showing a willingness to understand the requirements and design a custom solution for us… (there are) different demands here in Australia to those plants in Europe. The difference it has made has been terrific: for example, we used to have two data collection points on the kill floor and now we have 20. The throughput was 300 pigs per hour and now we’re processing between 700 -750 per hour. The value the Emydex team is adding is fantastic. Support is brilliant, with clear concise and well-presented analysis of issues reported, coupled with mitigation, solutions and actions to monitor and implement fixes. Live dashboards will broadcast information to the right people throughout the group worldwide in real-time. We’re very happy to be working with them and would recommend Emydex to any manufacturer anywhere.

Iestyn Thomas, Group IT Manager, Sunpork Group

I would absolutely recommend Emydex because they have invested their time and resources in our business… it means as much to them as it does to us. Some of their guys came out and spent a month working at the coal face and we couldn’t ask for more commitment than that.

Geoff Miller, Group CFO and Company Secretary

 

For more on Emydex's Products, or contact Sales in any of our Dublin, Brisbane, South Africa or Toronto offices

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Emydex North America Market Update

Emydex Technology, a Dublin company specialising in Traceability Software for the food processing industry, have secured its third customer in the North American market. This contract brings to 120 the number of processing plants using Emydex software worldwide, in 14 countries. The company secured its first North American contract in Canada two years ago with pork processor Donald’s Fine Foods and has since closed a deal with Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco).

Emydex was established in 2004 by co-founders James Grennan and Redmond Burke to offer fish and pork producers and food processors an integrated production management system tailored to their needs.

Now led by chief executive David McMahon, Emydex employs more than 50 people at its Dublin headquarters and overseas offices in Canada, Australia and South Africa. The company’s factory- floor software is aimed primarily at large-scale processors. The software combines production control with traceability and quality reporting, yield analysis, stock and food safety management.

“We’ve now moved into the Saas (software as a service) space,” said McMahon.

“We are very focused on our three export markets: Africa, Australia and North America.

“We have spent 12 years developing solutions for 60 customers, with 120 plants around the world, and the question then became ‘what else do they need from us?’.

“We’ve spent the last two years building an online quality management system and that’s been really successful. We then went back to our customers with ten other products we were thinking of building and asked them ‘how interested are you?’.

“They came back and offered to help us with design and testing. So, we’re now working on three new products, two of which are Saas, for group production planning group animal payments and Factory of the Future.”

An export-led company, Emydex has customers in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Namibia. The firm targets countries with strong meat exports, a relatively low concentration of large-scale processors and a strong regulatory framework for food traceability.

Emydex is a client company of state agency Enterprise Ireland. “They have helped us with R&D grants for new product development and internationalisation grants to help market entry into our key new markets,” said McMahon.

Written by Elaine O’Regan – Sunday Business Post

The Business Post

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