Meat processing can pick up pace: Alliance

ALLIANCE Group expects its processing capacity to be nearly normal under Alert Level 3, good news for farmers who have been facing a bottleneck as they look to offload stock before winter.

One change was that workers were now able to be one metre apart rather than the twometre distance required under Level 4.

‘‘It makes a big difference in terms of productivity,’’ general manager of livestock and shareholder services Danny Hailes said.

Mr Hailes said he expected sheep processing to be at 90% while beef would be close to 100%.

It had been operating at 50% for sheep and 70% for beef in Level 4.

Workers would be decked out in personal protective equipment, including safety glasses, gloves, splash guards, face masks and ‘‘in some cases we’ve put in place screens’’, he said.

The onemetre distancing rule also meant the plants could run their chains with one animal carcass on each hook as opposed to leaving a hook between animals.

Each plant was recording who was working in which team or bubble at each site.

‘‘We are recording who is where and limiting interaction where we can between teams or bubbles of workers,’’ Mr Hailes said.

The plants had always operated with strict hygienic requirements, largely around food safety. That had been stepped up even further, with additional disinfecting of surfaces, he said.

Alliance Group had had three workers test positive for Covid19. The first two were in Southland and had returned from an overseas trip. They selfisolated and were not in contact with anyone at work.

The third was in Timaru. Mr Hailes said all workers who had been in contact with that person had tested negative for the virus.

In order to deal with congestion in processing, the plants were adding extra processing time, operating for an additional halfhour each day and working weekends. This past weekend, for example, all plants bar one had operated on Saturday — and that one operated on Sunday.

Two beef plants also operated on Monday, which the Anzac Day public holiday was transferred to.

‘‘We are really doing our best to process as many animals for farmers as we can safely and to do it as quickly as we can,’’ Mr Hailes said.

Farmers have been under pressure to send stock to processors as winter is setting in and they do not want to run out of feed or have animals lose condition. — BusinessDesk