KEY POINTS:
The Government is providing funding of nearly $4 million for research and development work that will culminate in a fully automated boning-room demonstration system.
The funding, through the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, will support a three year $10 million R&D project by company Robotic Technologies Ltd
(RTL).
RTL is a joint venture between Dunedin's Scott Technology and meat processing company PPCS.
It has already developed a few individual components of the automated lamb boning room system but the bulk of the work remains to be done.
A fully automated system will provide processors with benefits of about $4 million a year in increased yield of meat from each carcass, for each processing plant where the technology was installed, RTL estimated.
There would also be labour savings of around $1 million a year, a key advantage in an industry with a dwindling labour pool and tight profit margins.
The company's estimate was based on a throughput of 10 carcasses per minute and two shifts a day.
RTL also believed a significant export market existed for the automated boning technology.
Improved yields would result from greater accuracy in cutting, being able to take more meat off the bone and providing a calculated bias towards higher-value cuts of meat, RTL said.
Health and safety would benefit, doing away with band saws which, used in meat boning rooms, were the biggest single source of injury in the meat industry.
The RTL joint venture partners have invested around $8 million in boning room automation R&D since 2000, with significant investment from Meat & Livestock Australia and the foundation, which has contributed $1.1 million so far.
Equipment already designed and developed by RTL includes a primal cutter, which cuts the lamb into three parts, and hindquarter machines.
The cutter is being trialled in this country and Melbourne, while the hindquarter machines are being used at one PPCS plant in the South Island. Work was also far advanced on an x-ray sensing system.
When integrated into one system the equipment would take a chilled and pre-trimmed carcass and process it into a forequarter, a saddle and two hind legs.
Scott Technology managing director Chris Hopkins said the aim was to commercialise parts of the system as they were developed.
It was intended to manufacture the technology in this country, but if the value of the New Zealand dollar rose further offshore manufacturing would become more economical, Mr Hopkins said.
The automation technology was being developed at a time when meat works were short of process workers.
The problem was even worse in Australia, where companies had brought in families from overseas just to get enough staff, he said.
Some process workers would also need to upskill to new jobs as technicians when automated systems were introduced.
- NZPA