KEEP IT MOVING: THE KEY TO AN OPTIMISED POULTRY PROCESS

I’m guessing you’ve heard the saying, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. While this might be true in some cases, in our line of work, efficiency is a key driver for change, and I like to think there’s always room for improvement.

Take for example poultry processing, where it’s common to have a product chain which involves one of your staff removing a batch of chicken from a drum, loading it onto a trolley, and driving it into a cold store where it is kept for 24 hours before being taken to the processing line. This may be a familiar scenario, but it is also double-handling at its most prevalent and ultimately costing your business money.

Why is this limiting your profit margins?

You may not have ever seen it this way, but for every additional minute the product spends away from the processing line, the longer it takes to be weighed, graded, marinated, packed, or indeed sold from the supermarket shelf.

For that same period of time, that particular cut of meat is not as fresh as it could have been when it eventually reaches the retailer.

Food safety first

In the poultry processing industry, the fact of the matter is that there will always be a degree of risk if you’re touching, moving, or storing meat before it has been processed. That degree of risk has the potential to add cost and compromise hygiene.

Not only can unnecessary handling harm your ever-tightening profit margin, but it can also leave you falling short of retailers’ established food safety and biosecurity standards.

Keeping meat on the move

In-line processing is a philosophy which derives from lean manufacturing, and relies on the product being on the move at all times. Applying an in-line approach to poultry processing means ensuring meat stays on the move.

The processing of poultry has followed routine procedure for many years, requiring high numbers of staff and vast amounts of factory space. Like I said earlier, there’s always room for improvement and this is one areas that can easily be addressed.

Thanks to technological developments, there is now much greater potential to save time, money, and space, not to mention improve the quality of the final product stocked on supermarket shelves. So why not consider moving you meat, rather than your operators to see the benefits that can be gained?

To find out more about how you can optimise your process, download our new white paper, The Poultry Processing Blueprint. Please do connect with me if you wished to discuss your poultry operation.