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Kepak Group: Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

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

Kepak Group Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

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.

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Dawn Meats Group: More Than Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

More than twenty years after Dawn Meats Group first started working with Emydex, the partnership has been recognised with one of our twenty-year Customer Milestone Plaques. Earlier this month, the plaque was presented to Shane Slattery, Chief Information Officer at Dawn Meats Group, marking one of the longest-standing customer relationships in Emydex’s history.

About Dawn Meats Group

Founded in County Waterford in 1980, Dawn Meats Group is a family-owned business and a leading beef and lamb processor. The group employs more than 12,000 people across thirteen countries, operates eleven sites in Ireland, six in New Zealand and thirteen in the UK, and supplies retailers, manufacturers and foodservice customers in over 70 countries. Each year it processes around 1.6 million cattle, 8 million sheep and 70,000 deer, sourced from 30,000 farmers and 4,300 farmer shareholders.

How it started

Dawn Meats first began working with Emydex in 2005, in our own early years as a company, and started rolling out Emydex Production Management across the group in 2008. Grannagh, Rathdowney and Charleville went live in Ireland, followed in November 2009 by Highland Meats in Scotland, where the first phase centred on Carcass Management integrated to the plant’s existing kill line.

Martin Curran, then Group Factory Systems Manager at Dawn Meats, said at the Highland go-live:

It’s a credit to the joint Emydex/Dawn team that we are now in a position where with adequate planning, Emydex module roll-outs can be completed within a short space of time without any interruption to production.”

Within four years of the first rollout, the system was operating as the group standard for factory floor data capture, production control and traceability reporting in eleven of the thirteen plants in the group at that time, covering everything from carcass intake through boning, packing and dispatch.

Shane Slattery said at the time:

Emydex is a central pillar of our strategic IT plan going forward, and our goal now is to concentrate on completing the roll-out of Emydex to our primary processing sites by year end. This plan may seem aggressive, but we believe that it is achievable on account of the inherent flexibility of the core Emydex product to handle any differences in the business processes required in our disparate sites.”

What changed along the way

Quite a lot. In 2015 Dawn went live with Emydex Warehouse Management at its cold store and distribution site near Birmingham, covering goods inwards, blast freezing, put-away, picking and dispatch.

Then came quality. Dawn Meats’ factory checks had been paper-based until that point: printed, handed out, filled in, countersigned, filed, and physically retrieved whenever an auditor asked for them. The Emydex Quality Management System went live in two Irish plants in 2019. By 2024 it was running across fourteen primary processing plants in Ireland and the UK, and Dawn’s own technical team had built close to 500 quality workflows in it themselves, from abattoir and boning hall pre-op checks to GMP audits and metal detector checks, without needing to involve our developers or their internal IT department.

More than twenty years on

Dawn Meats Group More Than Twenty Years of Partnership with Emydex

Twenty years is a long time in any technology relationship. Over that period Emydex has become part of how we run our plants, across production, traceability and quality. The reliability of the system matters, and so does the fact that the people behind it understand meat processing. We are pleased to mark the milestone and we look forward to what comes next.”

Shane Slattery, Chief Information Officer, Dawn Meats Group

Two decades brings a lot of change: new sites, new customers, new regulations, new people on both sides. What matters is that the system has kept earning its place through all of it. The milestone plaques are our way of recognising that.

Dawn Meats 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 Shane and everyone at Dawn Meats Group and thank you for the trust you have placed in our team over more than 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.

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Ashbourne Meat Processors: Ten Years of Partnership with Emydex

Earlier this month, we shared that Emydex has started delivering Customer Milestone Plaques to long-standing customers across our global markets, recognising partnerships of ten, fifteen and twenty years. The first plaque has now been delivered to Ashbourne Meat Processors, marking ten years of working with Emydex.

About Ashbourne Meat Processors

Founded in 1985, Ashbourne Meat Processors is a family-owned Irish beef processor with operations in Roscrea, County Tipperary, and Naas, County Kildare.

The business employs close to 200 people across its abattoir, deboning and cold storage operations, supplying premium chilled beef to customers throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Ashbourne has also received recognition for the quality and sustainability of its products in recent years, including a gold medal at the World Steak Challenge and Gold membership of Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme.

Connecting Two Plants Through One System

Before the Emydex implementation, Ashbourne’s Roscrea and Naas plants were largely operating independently. Livestock information recorded at Roscrea generated its own paperwork, which then had to be recreated when carcasses were transferred to Naas or to other sites.

The implementation was completed across the two sites in phases, starting with the Naas deboning operation before moving to the Roscrea abattoir, roughly 100 kilometres away.

Both plants were connected through the same system, covering processes from livestock intake through boning, packing and dispatch. Ear tags could also be scanned and animal information registered automatically with AIMS, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Identification and Movement System, removing a step that had previously relied on manual data entry.

PJ Butler, Plant Manager at Roscrea, described the impact shortly after the system went live:

The savings in administration were immediate. We saved a labour unit in the office immediately, and the piles of paperwork and stacks of files are a thing of the past. We’re almost paperless now, except for the cheques which some of our more traditional farming suppliers prefer over electronic payments. I estimate that actual physical paperwork has decreased by 95 percent, and that’s a huge achievement.”

Ten Years On

Ashbourne Meat Processors: Ten Years of Partnership with Emydex

A decade later, Ashbourne continues to use Emydex across both plants.

After ten years, Emydex is firmly embedded in how we manage our operations. The consistency and traceability it provides across both plants, together with the team’s understanding of the beef industry, has been an important part of that relationship.”

Donal Houlihan
Operations Manager, Ashbourne Meat Processors

A decade brings a lot of change: new regulations, growing volumes, new plant layouts, sometimes new technology on the factory floor altogether. Emydex has kept working alongside Ashbourne through all of that, and the two companies are still working together ten years later.

Ashbourne is one of several 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 everyone at Ashbourne Meat Processors on ten years of partnership and thank you for the trust you have placed in our team throughout that time.

To learn more about how Emydex supports beef processors with production management, traceability and quality systems, visit our Beef Processing Software page or contact our team.

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10+ Years Together: Recognising Our Long-Standing Customers

Some of our customers have been working with Emydex for more than 10 years. Others are now approaching 15 or even 20 years with us.

That is something we are very proud of, and something we do not take for granted.

A lot can change over a decade. Businesses grow, sites expand, technology moves on and new challenges emerge. During that time, our teams have continued working closely with these customers, supporting their operations and adapting our solutions as their needs have changed.

For us, the fact that so many of these relationships have lasted for 10, 15 and 20+ years says a lot about the way we work with our customers.

Recognising our long-standing customers

To recognise these milestones, we have created a series of Customer Milestone Plaques for customers who have been with Emydex for more than a decade.

Each plaque marks an important milestone in our relationship with that customer and recognises the many years we have worked together.

The plaques are now being prepared for delivery to our long-standing customers across the markets we serve.

And if your company has been with us for more than 10 years, you know who you are.

Keep an eye out. Something may be heading your way soon.

Thank you to all our long-standing customers for being part of the Emydex story.

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Better Again: Emydex Retains Great Place to Work Certification for a Third Year

Based on anonymous employee feedback, the 2026 results gave Emydex an 81% overall positivity score, up from 80% in 2025 and 73% in 2024, with 96% of employees taking part in the survey, our highest participation rate to date. 

It is a result we are proud of, but also one that says something about the people behind Emydex. 

The People Behind the Technology 

Camaraderie was our strongest dimension this year, at 91%. Almost all respondents said Emydex is a physically safe place to work and that people are made to feel welcome when they join, and 96% said they can be themselves here. 

Developers work closely with project teams, project teams work directly with customers, and support teams draw on knowledge built up across the business. People rely on each other every day.

David McMahon, CEO of Emydex, said:  

Three years in, the trend keeps moving the right way. What I take most pride in is that our people can see the link between what they told us last year and what actually changed this year. That’s what makes a survey worth doing again. 

A Culture That Has to Keep Evolving 

Receiving the certification for a third year does not mean the employee experience is finished, or that there is nothing left to improve. One of the main reasons we keep taking part in Great Place to Work is the feedback itself. The survey gives our people an independent, anonymous way to tell us what is working and where they want to see change. 

Confidence that Emydex will act on that feedback reached 80% this year. Asking people what they think only has value when their answers stay part of the conversation afterwards. 

Urszula Stawicka, who leads culture and engagement at Emydex, added:  

An 81% score is a good headline, but the 96% response rate tells us just as much. People took the time to answer because they trust that we listen. Our job now is to keep giving them reasons to.

As Emydex continues to grow, we want to keep building a company where experienced people want to stay, new people feel welcome, and teams can do their best work together. 

Thank you to everyone who took part in this year’s survey, and to the wider Emydex team who shape our culture every day. 

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Silver Fern Farms Extends Emydex Across Venison Processing with Two Successful Plant Go-Lives

Silver Fern Farms has extended its use of Emydex into venison processing, with successful go-lives at two New Zealand plants in five weeks. Rotorua went live on 8 June 2026, followed by Kennington, near Invercargill, on 6 July. The two sites are the seventh and eighth Silver Fern Farms plants to run Emydex, and mark the first venison implementation in Emydex’s 22-year history. 

A partnership that keeps growing 

Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading processor, marketer and exporter of premium lamb, beef and venison. The company produces around 30% of the country’s red meat across 14 plants, and has been an Emydex customer since 2019. 

The first phase of the partnership covered beef. Emydex was rolled out plant by plant across the beef network, with each site bringing its own processing flows, throughput and reporting needs. When the Pacific site went live in 2025, all six beef plants were running Emydex across the full primary butchery workflow, from the kill floor through liveweight and EID capture, grading, inspection and carcass-level traceability. The legacy CRS system was retired. 

Just as important, those six deployments settled a way of working: close collaboration between Emydex and site teams, phased testing, and a structured go-live that keeps production running. Venison put that model to the test. 

Building venison processing from the ground up 

Venison was a new species for the Emydex platform, so there was no existing configuration to lean on. The Emydex team worked with Silver Fern Farms subject matter experts to define the workflows, product structures and data capture requirements that deer processing needs. 

Both plants operate a manual chain with four Emydex data capture stations on the factory floor: 

  • Bolt station: records each animal at the start of processing 
  • Liveweight and EID station: captures live weights and electronic identification for lifetime traceability 
  • Inspection station: records veterinary and quality inspection outcomes on the line 
  • Grading station: captures carcass grades and weights, feeding supplier payments and yield data 

Each station feeds the plant’s kill line and traceability systems as the chain runs. 

Two go-lives in five weeks 

Rotorua came first, and with it the work of a first-of-species implementation: new workflows, new product structures and extensive testing before the switch. The go-live itself was straightforward. Silver Fern Farms reported that the system settled in quickly, and the few minor issues that surfaced were resolved by the Emydex support team within days. 

Kennington was built on the configuration proven at Rotorua and went live five weeks later. For a processor running multiple sites, this is the point that matters: once a species is proven on the platform, the next plant is faster to deliver, carries less risk and starts returning value sooner.

Rotorua 

Kennington 

Real-time visibility with Emydex BI 

Both venison plants run Emydex Business Intelligence, now standard across the Silver Fern Farms network. User access for every site is managed centrally from a single point, which cuts administration and keeps permissions consistent as the network grows. 

On the operations side, teams work from live dashboards rather than end-of-day reports. A Kill List view shows what is on the day’s kill and how it is progressing. A Carcass Summary breaks down carcasses by destination with weights and averages. A Contamination dashboard tracks rates against the government standard in real time, giving managers the chance to act before a problem grows. Daily Kill Sheets and carcass reports cover traceability and compliance across both sites. 

Across a network of our size, the real value is consistency. Emydex gives our teams a shared operational picture, so they spend less time pulling data together and more time acting on it. Decisions that previously depended on end-of-day reporting can now happen much closer to the floor, and Rotorua and Kennington were able to start delivering that value from the early stages of go-live.”

Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer, Silver Fern Farms

Looking ahead 

With venison now proven across two sites, the groundwork is in place to extend the species further across the Silver Fern Farms network, and the wider programme of collaboration continues. 

Emydex provides production management, traceability and business intelligence software to meat, fish and food processors worldwide. If you are evaluating MES or traceability systems for venison, beef or any other species, get in touch to request a demo. 

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