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Emydex Visits Silver Fern Farms Te Aroha and Pacific Plants in New Zealand

During their latest operational tour across Australasia, Emydex CEO David McMahon and General Manager – Australasia Shane Hayes visited two Silver Fern Farms (SFF) beef processing plants in New Zealand: Te Aroha and Pacific (Hastings).

The visits reinforced the strong partnership between Emydex and New Zealand’s leading red meat processor and highlighted the continued evolution of digital transformation across the SFF network.

Strengthening a Proven Partnership

Silver Fern Farms has been working with Emydex since 2020 to modernise production management, traceability and data visibility across its beef plants.

With both Te Aroha and Pacific live on Emydex, all six SFF beef primary butchery sites are now either completed or in the final stages of rollout.

David McMahon commented:

“These visits reaffirm the strength of our collaboration with SFF and highlight the real impact that digital transformation can have on plant performance, visibility and decision-making across the network.”

Insights From the Plant Floor

The visits allowed the Emydex team to observe production flows, terminal usage and operator interactions directly on the factory floor. This hands-on engagement ensures that future improvements, refinements and upcoming deployments can be aligned with the operational reality of each site.

Shane Hayes added:

“It was great to meet the plant teams in Te Aroha and Pacific and see firsthand how they’re using Emydex day-to-day. Their feedback is essential as we continue to improve and scale the solution across new species and plants.”

The Emydex team would also like to acknowledge the support received during the visits. Special thanks to Jeff Hulena for travelling to shadow both plant tours, and to Dylan Marsh for accompanying the Pacific visit. We also appreciate the time and insights shared by plant managers Namu Searancke-Henderson at Te Aroha and Cory Hogg at Pacific, who hosted the team on site.

Go-Lives at Pacific and Te Aroha

Both plants have successfully gone live on Emydex MES as part of Silver Fern Farms’ multi-year digital transformation programme, supported by strong collaboration between SFF and Emydex teams.

Pacific (Hastings)

The Pacific site completed its transition from a legacy CRS system to Emydex through a structured deployment, including a custom liveweight solution tailored to the site’s requirements and the rollout of SFF BI V2, providing enhanced data insights.

SFF’s Chief Transformation Officer, Matt Ballard, praised the progress, describing the milestone as a significant step forward for the beef network.

Te Aroha

Te Aroha was the fourth SFF beef primary butchery site to adopt Emydex MES, a deployment that has since proven highly stable and effective across all plant operations.

Its long-term performance continues to demonstrate the adaptability of the Emydex platform to different operational layouts and species-specific workflows.

Looking Ahead

With the beef network nearing completion, the next phase will focus on expansion into venison and lamb, continuous improvement initiatives and further standardisation across the SFF group.

The New Zealand plant visits strengthen collaboration and ensure both teams remain aligned as SFF advances its long-term digital transformation journey.

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Learn how Emydex can support your plant’s digital transformation with robust MES, traceability and production control solutions.

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Emydex & Sustainable Beef. The Journey Goes Live

Supporting a modern beef processing operation in Nebraska

Emydex is proud to announce the go‑live of its software platform at Sustainable Beef, a newly launched beef processing facility based in North Platte, Nebraska, USA. After months of preparation and collaboration, the Emydex team was on site in June 2025 to assist with the final setup, configuration and support for the system’s first operational phase. This marks an important step in the deployment of our solution across the plant and a milestone in our partnership with one of the most forward-thinking beef processors in the United States.

About Sustainable Beef

Sustainable Beef was founded to bring transparency, efficiency and shared value to every part of the beef supply chain. The project was led by a group of cattle producers and investors with deep regional ties and a vision for long-term impact. The North Platte facility is expected to:

  • Process up to 1,500 cattle per day at full capacity
  • Employ over 850 people locally
  • Contribute more than $1.2 billion annually to the Nebraska economy

These figures reflect not just scale but a commitment to redefining community-driven beef production.

On‑site support during go‑live

During the visit, our team worked closely with Sustainable Beef operators to configure and test the platform in a live production environment. Key activities included:

  • Activating kill line traceability
  • Enabling end‑to‑end traceability reporting from intake through dispatch
  • Supporting inventory and quality control functions
  • Assisting with the use of plant-floor devices
  • Ensuring a smooth handover for autonomous system use

Our on‑site support ensured a seamless transition from planning to operation, with full process visibility from day one.

A growing partnership

Sustainable Beef is building more than a processing facility. It is creating a blueprint for transparent, efficient and community-focused beef processing. Emydex will continue to support this mission with scalable modules for production management, traceability, inventory control and compliance. With the successful go‑live now complete, the foundation is laid for ongoing digital transformation and operational excellence. Want to learn more about how Emydex supports beef processors with traceability, efficiency and compliance systems?
Contact us today to schedule a Demo.

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A new Dawn for Quality systems

Dawn Meats Group, one of Europe’s leading meat processing companies, sought to streamline its factory-floor Quality Management System with Emydex.

 

Meet the client

Dawn Meats Group is a family-owned business established in 1980 in Waterford, Ireland. The company has grown to become one of the largest and most important beef and sheep processing groups in the industry. The group employs over 8,000 people across twelve countries, including ten sites in Ireland and thirteen in the UK, and exports to over 50 countries worldwide.

Every year, Dawn Meats Group processes over 1 million cattle and 3.5 million sheep, generating more than €2.5 billion in turnover for the company and contributing over €1.67 billion to rural economies through 30,000 farms in Ireland and the UK.

The numbers are staggering, and so is their success.

 

The Opportunity

Dawn Meats developed its own in-house quality management system, which largely relied on manual, paper-based checks throughout its factory floors.

While this was rigorous and helped to maintain the company’s highest quality products, it was inefficient, creating delays, tons of paper, and hours of data entry. The old manual way of working involved lengthy printing, handing out, filling in, returning, checking, countersigning, and storing paper records. On top of that, files had to be physically retrieved in the event of an audit or to trend data.

For the past decade (since 2013), Emydex has been developing an Electronic Quality Management System (EQMS) capable of being used in single plants as well as across multi-plant group processors like Dawn Meats Group

Emydex’s Quality Management System is a software system that allows food processors carry out their factory and food safety quality and audit checks on tablets, reporting instantly in the back-office, replacing all paper-based quality check sheets on the factory floor.

A perfect fit for Dawn Meats Group.

“​We selected Emydex, a long-standing partner of ours, due to Emydex’s understanding of our food production facilities, their excellent software development ability and personal project management delivery,” said Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group.

 

There were several drivers behind Dawn Meats Group’s decision to select Emydex:

 

One System

The first was Emydex gave Dawn Meats Group one single system, with Emydex’s quality module sitting alongside all other Emydex factory floor MES, Production and Warehouse Management modules on one common platform.

“We have worked with Emydex over the past decade on the production and traceability side, so we trust them”, commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Cloud or On-Premises

The EQMS system can be installed on-premises or in the cloud. Emydex doesn’t force its customers to operate their QMS out of the cloud; they can install it on-prem if necessary.

“Emydex has had a tremendous impact on our shop floor quality data collection on site, as well as safeguarding completion of checks in a scheduled and timely manner.  Its reliability and speed have ensured that workflows carried out have been given full attention, and no corners are cut.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Online and Offline Mode

Another key differentiator is that the system can work offline as well as online for all compatible mobile devices, using local databases. This means operators can switch to offline mode when capturing quality data in areas with poor or zero Wi-Fi coverage.

“Our QA’s like the systems’ ability to save checks within the factory, without needing to return the checks to folders which would previously have occurred. The system’s speed and performance has allowed for more thorough and detailed checks on the line, as well as increasing their time available to carry out additional checks, without needing to carry out tedious admin tasks.”, commented Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team.

 

Flexibility

Finally, the system is very configurable in-house including an easy-to-use quality workflow builder tool. This function allows in-house QC personnel (non-IT people) to design and build their own Quality workflows in-house, including QC surveys, QC check-sheets and quality audits.

“I like how their QMS system is flexible, and how we can configure it to how we wanted to work – not something you get with an out-of-the-box solution. This flexibility means we can build our own workflows ourselves, not involving Emydex nor internal IT.” added John Coleman, Dawn Meats Group, Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Going Live

The Emydex Quality Management System has been operating in Dawn Meats Group’s Irish & UK facilities for over five years now. Having first gone live in two Irish plants in 2019, today the system is operating in Dawn Meat’s seven primal processing plants in Ireland, as well as a further seven group primal processing plants in the UK, fourteen plants so far, with further roll-outs underway, including three retail processing plants in the UK.

At this point Dawn’s group technical QC team have configured internally almost 500 separate QC workflows in Emydex including for example, Abattoir and Boning Hall pre-op checks, GMP audits, metal detector checks, glass and hard plastic, knife register, and attendance checks etc. Once built centrally, such workflows can then be used across all the group’s sites.

 

The Results

Emydex EQMS helps Dawn Meats Group streamline the QMS processes across its factories and ensure they are working to the most effective QMS system. Standardising the QMS and FSM systems across the group improves compliance and shares best practices throughout all the facilities.

“External auditors have had a positive outlook on the Emydex quality system, frequently commenting on its benefits of generating reports, assigning close-outs, and collating data at a click of a button.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Using the Document Management System included within the system, sites can share generic documents and processes and tailor the specifics to the site. This reduces time lost in writing up documents and figuring out procedures and risk assessments.

The system creates actions, alerts, notifications and alarms in real-time and automatically tells them when they are out of compliance, forcing the immediate implementation of corrective actions.

“The less obvious savings are evident too – less time and effort, fewer mistakes and corrections, reduced hold-ups, etc. I can see if people are making the required quality checks and if they are making them at exactly the right times.” John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

It improves compliance and reduces issues in announced and unannounced audits, reducing risk with defective product, product recalls and customer satisfaction.

The Emydex system frees up resources to drive product quality improvements and frees up archive space and storage. It will give central management a holistic view through instant visibility of all factories in one centralised system, making KPI reporting easier and maximising safety, quality and compliance.

“The result is that resources have been freed up. Less paperwork, collection is instant, no errors, less time, no printing, archive space has been freed up, we have instant and easy retrieval of documents – everything has improved and is more accurate.” commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

Finally, this accurate QMS data can drive operational processes and business decisions, helping continuous improvement by providing instant effect data.

“The Emydex Quality System is an innovative, adaptable software solution which fulfils the needs of Dawn Meats Group and continues to evolve through more areas of our factories, making them fit for the future.”
Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group

 

Don’t wait! Embrace the future of quality management with electronic quality management
software.

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

Request a Demo

Silver Fern Farms welcomes Emydex to Fourth Beef plant in Te Aroha, New Zealand

Silver Fern Farms Expands Emydex Integration in Te Aroha

The Silver Fern Farms Emydex implementation continued following successful rollouts of the factory floor MES system in its primary beef processing plants in Belfast, Dargaville, and Hawera. Earlier this month (12/13 October), the fourth beef primal processing plant in Te Aroha, North Island, New Zealand, went live.

Commenting on the go-live, Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer with Silver Fern Farms, said “this deployment went smoothly and the adoption by our frontline teams has been excellent”. 
 

Emydex rollouts are planned to continue in 2025, with the beef processing plants in Finegand and Pacific set to come online with the Emydex for primary processing, production control and traceability reporting.

 

Emydex CEO, David McMahon, added, “A huge thanks to our Emydex team working on the SFF project, including Carne De Vreede, Saffi Muhammed, Ashley Buckle, and Felsi Judith Lawrence in Emydex New Zealand, as well as Carl Brennan in Emydex Australia who flew over to New Zealand to support another successful go-live with no Emydex stoppages.”

 

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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Emydex Software: A Game-Changer for Beef Processors

Emydex, a leading provider of software solutions for the meat processing industry, is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024.

For over two decades, Emydex Beef Processing Software has been transforming how leading meat processors operate across the globe. Trusted by industry leaders like Dawn Meats, Central Agri Group, and Ashbourne Meats, Emydex delivers robust, adaptable solutions that improve efficiency, traceability, and productivity throughout the beef supply chain.

Ashbourne Meats in Ireland, an Emydex customer for eight years, praised the Emydex team for their reliability, friendliness, and professionalism. Donal Houlihan, Operations Manager, said, “The Emydex team have an excellent understanding of the Meat Industry. The system is extremely user-friendly, allowing a smooth working environment across all our production lines. Their technology constantly meets our needs in an ever-evolving industry.” read full story.

 

Central Agri Group in Victoria, Australia, has been an Emydex customer for eight years. The Managing Director, Rami Koyu, commended Emydex for its smooth rollout and the positive response from operators. He said, “The Emydex roll-out was one of the smoothest IT system rollouts I have ever been involved in.” read full story.

 

Dawn Meats Group in Ireland, an Emydex customer for twenty years, praised Emydex for its agility. Shane Slattery, Group CIO, said, “For twenty years, Dawn Meats and Emydex have been in a symbiotic partnership, during which time the Emydex solutions have been able to be quickly adapted to changes within both our industry and business.” read full story.

 

Eurofarm Foods in Ireland, an Emydex customer for fourteen years, commended Emydex for its ‘can-do’ attitude as well as excellent helpdesk support. Ciaran Boyle, General Manager, said, “More recently, Emydex were also there to support our business in the immediate aftermath of a cyber-attack on the business in Sept 2021. This was a phenomenal result to say the least.” read full story.

 

Harvey Beef in Western Australia, an Emydex customer for nine years, praised the Emydex team for their willingness to understand their problems and look at solutions. Mike Stephenson, Head of Technology, said, “The team are great to work with and always willing to understand our problems and look at solutions to improve the way our Emydex is integrated with our business.” read full story.

 

Kepak Group in Ireland & UK, an Emydex customer for seventeen years, commended Emydex for its support in their business growth. Jeremy O’Callaghan, Group CIO, said, “Emydex has 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.” read full story.

 

Liffey Meats in Ireland, a customer operating Emydex in two of its plants, commended Emydex for its ‘can-do’ attitude. Derek McDermott, Chief Financial Officer, said, “Having worked with Dave and his team for the past fourteen years, I can say the key difference with Emydex is their ‘can do’ attitude.” read full story.

 

MeatCo Namibia, an Emydex customer in Southern Africa for thirteen years, praised Emydex for its fit-for-purpose product. Grant Mitchell, IT Manager: Production Systems, said, “Emydex is a Fit for Purpose product, which complements our Business.” read full story.

 

Silver Fern Farms, operating fourteen plants in New Zealand, has been an Emydex customer for four years, currently operating Emydex in two of its plants with further plant rollouts in progress. Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer, highlighted Emydex’s ability to provide greater traceability and process controls, saying, “Emydex has shown it can provide greater traceability and process controls that are positive in meeting Silver Fern Farms needs over the longer term.” read full story.

 

Wilson Hellaby Ltd, with two plants in New Zealand, has been an Emydex customer for three years. Justin Lee, Chief Financial Officer, commended Emydex’s innovative approach to software development, saying, “In both instances, we were able to employ Emydex’s innovative approach to software development to solve challenges within our industry where off-the-shelf solutions just don’t exist.” read full story.

 

These testimonials from just ten of Emydex’s global beef customers highlight the significant benefits that Emydex software brings to beef processors, including smooth rollouts, greater traceability, innovative solutions, and excellent support. These customers have been working with Emydex for 119 years collectively across 36 plants.

Over the past two years, a dedicated team at Emydex HQ in Dublin, Ireland, has collaborated with numerous longstanding beef processing customers to develop a new Industry Standard software solution for the Beef Processing industry. This Vexillum (Latin for ‘Standard’) project aims to create a comprehensive, ready-to-use Manufacturing Execution System (MES) tailored for beef processors. The initial rollout of this system will be undertaken by four Emydex beef processing customers, deploying it across more than 20 beef primary processing facilities in Ireland and the UK.

As Emydex celebrates its 20th anniversary, it looks forward to continuing to provide top-notch solutions for the beef processing industry.

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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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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