FOOD &
AGRI-BUSINESS
"The world is facing the challenge to feed an ever increasing population. To assist, GHD exercises its experience and innovative know-how to improve yields, productivity and efficiency."
Eric Bugeja
Food Processing
Service Line Leader
FOOD SAFETY IN THE AUSTRALIAN BEEF INDUSTRY
GHD’s food and agri-business team has been instrumental in developing a world-leading product tracking system for the meat industry.
Currently, the Australian livestock industry uses a permanent whole-of-life approach that allows individual animals to be identified electronically using a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) tag and tracked from property of birth to slaughter.
This National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) became mandatory in Australia in 2005. The system delivers a number of benefits, including improved market access, high product integrity and enhanced biosecurity.
GHD has been working on an advanced procedure that extends the tracking from where the animal is slaughtered through the full plant processing to final packaging.
Developed by GHD and Cumberland, the concept has been successfully trialled in a working environment at Colac in Victoria.
The new system takes the data from the NLIS electronic tag and then tracks the progress of the animal through the operations of the abattoir (slaughter, chilling and boning) by printing the data on the skid, the device that holds the carcass throughout the different stages of meat processing. The Australian beef industry now has the potential to trace and track meat products from the birth of an animal right through its life to the packaged product.
STATE-OF-THE ART LAMB PROCESSING IN CHILE
GHD was instrumental in bringing a new 1,000 carcasses per day, state-of-the-art lamb processing plant on-line at Punta Arenas in remote Patagonia in just 20 months.
Punta Arenas is a settlement of 120,000 people located on the southern end of Patagonia, where temperatures average around 10 degrees Celsius in summer and one degree in winter.
Our team was involved from project commencement for local client Carnes Agromar, providing the initial development study, completing the conceptual and detailed design, and delivering all engineering services through to commissioning of the plant.
The Carnes Agromar lamb processing plant is modelled on and exceeds world benchmark standards. All process equipment was put out to international tender and the most appropriate equipment was sourced from Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and the USA.
The project was also a family affair, with members of the Marins family, who own the business, providing architectural, project management, building construction services, plant management, accounting and marketing.
