High-grade software for high-grade salmon

Innova Food Processing Software at Mount Cook Alpine Salmon

The Mt Cook Alpine Salmon processing facility at Timaru in New Zealand opened in late 2013 and processes very high-grade salmon. The dynamic company is a fully integrated operation with its own supply chain, and exports most of its salmon to discerning markets around the world.

High-tech quality

With a strong focus on the high quality of its end products, it is important to Mt Cook Alpine Salmon that they own and control all the steps from farm through to sales. Innova Food Processing Software has supported this from the start, providing traceability from farm to pack and ensuring that critical information is always on hand in real time.

The value of automation

In modern salmon processing, high-tech equipment and food processing software is an absolute necessity. Keelty explains that the value of having the automated production system was quickly apparent.

“We’ve noticed there is a significant value in having Innova as opposed to the conventional paper-based systems in production.” Relying on a paper-based system, “creates more work and there is much greater chance of errors,” he adds.

Mt. Cook Alpine Salmon use Innova for receiving fish from farms to the factory and into production. They use Innova for order control and different stages of inventory management, as well as for weighing, labeling and packing of finished goods all the way through to the dispatch processes.

The company operates a range of Marel advanced processing equipment in conjunction with Innova for their grading, portioning and slicing operations.

“It’s a robust system and provides us real-time production management and a powerful tool for maintaining traceability from our salmon farms to dispatch orders,” says Keelty.

Easy to use

Despite the complexity and scope of some of the challenges it solves, Innova Food Processing Software is designed to be as user-friendly as possible. “Our operators like it because the system is easy to use and it’s consistent,” Keelty agrees.

“We also use it for trend analysis in our production through live reports and dashboards, we can easily do aged analysis, reporting on various areas including sales, harvest volumes, production tonnages and fish size.”

Return on investment

Mt Cook Alpine Salmon use Innova for order management, yield control and performance analysis across the plant. They use it for labeling, palletizing, inventory control and dispatch. The overall gains in efficiency are valuable and, in particular, being able to produce to order adds a lot of value:

“Innova helps us maintain optimum inventories and produce exactly to the orders,” says Keelty. “As a result, we minimize over- and under-production, and our products are always consistent and reliable.”