Dunedin-based Scott Technology and Silver Fern Farms have been developing a lamb forequarter cut automation system under joint venture Robotic Technologies Limited.

A first-of-its-kind, multi-million dollar machine may soon replace human workers at meat processing plants throughout the south and New Zealand.

Dunedin-based Scott Technology and Silver Fern Farms have been developing a lamb forequarter cut automation system under joint venture Robotic Technologies Limited.

The automation system makes a 3D model of individual carcasses using high-speed laser scanning. Once a 3D scan is made, a robot can quickly cut the carcass. The whole process can repeat itself five times a minute with a single machine.

Scott Technology sales and business development manager Mark Seaton said the machine could replace between three and six human workers.

"It's definitely a game-changer," he said.

"We haven't seen anything like it anywhere in the world. We can automate the whole front end of the boning room."

Seaton said not only could the machine operate at speeds faster than a human, but it would make meat processing safer by eliminating the need for people to stand close to dangerous saws.

Yet the machine would also come with a serious cost. Seaton said the X-ray scanning apparatus alone cost about $2.5 million.

"We're looking at a multi-million dollar machine."

Trial work taking place at Silver Fern Farms' Finegand plant, Seaton said development began about 2008. Since then, he said there had been massive improvements, such as the time required to scan a carcass being reduced from about 20 seconds to less than a second.

Seaton said there were plans to commercialise the technology, and that he expected to see it used at meat processing plants throughout Southland, New Zealand and Australia.

The lamb forequarter automation system has also been nominated in the Agribusiness and Environment category for the New Zealand Innovators Awards (NZIA).

Former Meat Industry Excellence member and Lawrence farmer Mark Patterson said robotics in the meat industry was "the way of the future".

``More robotics will be inevitable as meat companies look for efficiencies, and companies trying to take costs out has to be a good thing," Patterson said.

A concern was that with more foreign ownership, robotics could be used to do basic cuts and more processing done overseas, he said.

``I would like to think that the 'value-add' companies are putting emphasis in New Zealand plants would stay in New Zealand, especially the work done in boning rooms...I think that work would be hard to replicate by robots."

Companies in the meat industry have been testing and trialling automation in plants for a number of years now.

The Ovine Automation Consortium, a $14.8 million project was launched in 2009 to develop a range of robotic technologies to automate sheep processing chains of its nine partners, all major processors of sheep meats.

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