Innovation in agriculture & environment

Engineering company Scott Technology has combined x-ray, and other imaging technologies with high tech production lines to fully automate lamb boning – one of the last (and most complicated) bastions of manual mass production

AS ANYONE WHO’S ever carved a Sunday roast lamb knows, sheep aren’t uniform and it isn’t always easy getting all the meat off the carcass.

Which is perhaps why lamb boning remained one of the last mainly hands- on production processes in the meat works. Until now. 2013 saw the culmination of more than 10 years of R&D by Robotic Technologies Ltd, a joint venture between Scott Technology and meat processor Silver Fern Farms to develop a fully-automated, all bone-in cutting process.

The system involves each carcass being x-rayed using a unique imaging system to determine 3D cutting coordinates; using the x-ray data each animal is cut into three “primal” sections – forequarter, middle and hindquarter.

Next, the middle sections of the animal are imaged again and the body can be cut up depending on requirements, using the cutting coordinates, to separate out rack and loin saddles, cut off the flaps, and take out the vertebrae for French rack production, for example.

The final product is cuts of meat for retail or wholesale, produced with out human input, says sales and business development manager Mark Seaton. The process is increasing the viability of lamb meat production – one of New Zealand’s key industries, he says.

“Natural variation means every animal is unique and unpredictable. Scott’s equipment identifies the features in every carcass and adjusts cutting parameters to suit each one.

“Labour is reduced, safety is improved, bacteria is reduced and saleable yield is dramatically increased.”

Seaton says Scott Technologies realised that being able to cut up each animal accurately meant seeing what the carcass was like on the THINK THE SPACE race, and New Zealand isn’t necessarily the first country that springs to mind.

But former Crown Research scientist Peter Beck wasn’t going to let a small thing like that worry him when he founded Rocket Lab in 2007.

Rocket Lab was the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to launch a rocket into space, with the Atea-1 setting of from Great Mercury Island in 2009.

Now Electron, the world’s first carboncomposite rocket launch vehicle, is set for its first lift- off next year.

Targeting the small (100kg or less) satellite market, the company already has 30 inside – and that required x-ray technology.

With no ready-made solution available, the company set about making its own.

The joint venture with Silver Fern Farms provided not only investment but in-depth industry understanding, and the ability to thoroughly test prototypes at full production levels, Seaton says.

Already, the company has sold x-ray systems to meatworks in New Zealand and Australia, and another one is packed up ready to ship. JUDGES COMMENTS: This system benefits the New Zealand economy both through improved productivity and proven export sales. And the whole thing is grounded in some very innovative technology. commitments or memoranda of understanding.

Electron, an 18-metre long rockets weighing more than 10 tons, is designed to slash the cost and time of launch, Beck says. The average price of a dedicated satellite launch at the moment is US$133 million, he says, but sending Electron up will set you back less than $US5m.

“This represents a drastic cost reduction compared to existing launch services, and the lead time for businesses to launch a satellite will be reduced from years down to weeks through vertical integration with Rocket Lab’s private launch facility,” Beck says.

“Electron will deliver an in- demand service that has otherwise been unobtainable.”