APC Slicer | Case History
St. Merryn Meat Ltd
APC Ahead of the Game
As you approach the main gate of St. Merryn Meat Ltd., at Victoria, Cornwall, UK, you sense that this is an immaculate, state-of-the art processing plant built and equipped to the very highest standards. Opened in 1995, the plant carries out boning and retail packing and operates a cold storage facility. It also functions as the main headquarters to the 7 locations in the UK which form the St. Merryn group - one of the largest and most successful producers of retail packed fresh red meat in Europe.
St. Merryn's APC Slicer Plus cuts a variety of beef products including braising steak portions Since its incorporation as a group in 1987, growth at St. Merryn Meat has been extremely impressive and, with a brand new plant being built in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, along with a newly opened processing facility at Torres Novas in Portugal, this looks set to continue at a pace.
But back to the plant at Victoria, where advanced and innovative equipment produces and packs high volumes of catch weight and fixed weight, boneless, chilled and fresh beef products for Tesco Stores Ltd., Britain's largest supermarket group. St. Merryn has earned its position as a leading supplier to Tesco because of its ability to meet the extremely high levels of quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness demanded by their famous customer.
Quality of cut, speed of response, portion weight accuracy and high yields are so essential to the daily throughput at St. Merryn and the AEW THURNE APC Slicer Plus is one of those advanced and innovative items of equipment that plays such a vital role in helping to achieve those critical standards laid down by the company.
Currently, St. Merryn have APC Slicers at the Victoria site in Cornwall and in Torres Novas in Portugal where bone-in pork chops are produced for the retail market. The company is so pleased with the machines that they are intent on equipping the new Merthyr Tydfil plant with 4 additional units to meet the demand for fixed weight case ready product.
St. Merryn carried out extensive trials on a number of slicers before concluding that APC Slicer Plus was the best machine for them.
James Gwilliams, Technical Manager at the Victoria plant commented; "We think APC Slicer Plus is the best machine on the market for slicing chilled bone-in and boneless product. Fixed weight case ready is happening and soon all supermarkets will be doing it. We are ahead of the game with a machine that cuts all our products beautifully, has superb accuracy and can be used with confidence and ease by our operators - so many of the competitive machines are too complicated and, unlike APC, they are not purpose built for the job."
Speed, accuracy, ease of operation and high yields are high on any processor's list of priorities, but robustness and the ability to withstand the tough environment of an industry where strict hygiene regulations necessitate regular and thorough cleaning, are equally important. "APC scores here too,"
says James Gwilliams, with reliability, superb engineering and construction that makes cleaning so quick and simple - we just hose it down when we need to. An excellent working relationship has developed between St. Merryn Meat and AEW THURNE. Detailed on-site evaluation and investigation always produces very useful input and it soon became apparent that St. Merryn's future requirement for fresh beef portioning would be best met with AEW THURNE's new SmartSlice 3D slicer.
A machine was sent to the Victoria plant for trials, evaluation and comparison with other machines on the market.
A positive conclusion was soon reached. Here was a machine that was easy to operate, had that unique AEW THURNE approach to robustness and practicality and, with the built-in cutting pattern capability, possessed the ability to cut a whole range of fresh beef portions - from steaks to roasts/joints - from the same loin if need be.
"The three dimensional scanning capability produces a shadowless image of the product and gives incredible cutting accuracy. It's a feature that impresses us greatly." says Gwilliams, "The yields, flexibility and, as usual, the quality of cut, is excellent."
"It worked straight out of the box," commented Steve Morse, Process Development Manager, "It's another superb machine from AEW THURNE and we intend to have three of them working at our new plant in Merthyr Tydfil."
Thanks to John Allan, James Gwilliams, Steve Morse, and all at St. Merryn Meat Ltd. who helped us to produce this story.
