You really can’t even find Select beef on the market anymore. And so the beef industry has done a great job of giving financial incentive back to the farmers to use better genetic programs in order to produce a better eating experience. If we stay stagnant, we don’t give farmers an incentive to grow a better animal, we’re always going to have that inconsistency. We’re always going to have doubts in the consumer’s mind. So how do we shift as an industry? You know, I referenced the Prime Program, Prairie Fresh USA Prime Program that we have, where we’re scanning animals and pulling out a single-digit of our population. So we’re where beef was on that journey originally. Now we’re looking at it going, “Okay, how do we expand that? How do we get from single digits to 10% to 15%? How do we continue on that journey without lowering our standards to produce better quality animals that our customers expect?” It’s essential that every time somebody orders pork, they know what they’re going to get and they’re excited about ordering it. Now, what about innovation and technology? So we’ll get you out of here on this. Chad, are there any tech initiatives or innovations that you’re excited about at Seaboard? Yeah. So we’ve had a pretty significant focus at each one of our plants. You know, when you look at all three of our plants, one is 27 years old, but the rest of them are some of the newest in the industry. And the advantage that we have of having some of the newest in the industry plants is we have space to put in technology. And so we’ve been on some pretty significant journeys through each one of our three plants. But I’ll reference Guymon, Oklahoma. We recently put in a chine- boning loin operation that’s fully automated and completely changed the setup that we have down in that plant. Now that install is not without challenges, right? Anytime you put technology in, you’re going to have a dip in productivity, a dip in yields. But because Guymon and the technical expertise that we have in that region and a strong plant leader, we’ve been able to come out of it, and we were the first ones within the U.S. to install that technology. Now we’ll look to put that technology in the other three plants. If I look at the Triumph St. Joe facility, they were one of the first to put in the back-fitting technology. So we tested it there. Then we’ll swap it into Guymon and vice versa.
So every day, we’re looking at two factors, right? One is labor. I spoke about labor getting more expensive.
So what technology can we put in, in order to reduce labor but more importantly, what technology can we put in to make labor even easier? If you look at that back-fitting technology, if you look at chine-boning technology, historically speaking, the hardest job in that plant is neckbone-lifting. When you look at the technology now, it’s become one of the easiest jobs, because everything is marked and scored, and it makes lifting that neckbone even easier. So constantly looking at that new technology, you know, when I look at Triumph Foods, and Seaboard Triumph Foods, we want to be on the cutting edge, and because we have the space in the plant, have the newest, latest, greatest technology in our plants to start. That’s been the biggest focus for us, as I mentioned previously; it’s also our Prairie Fresh USA Prime Program, bringing that technology. And I referenced earlier how it has not been an incentive for farmers to produce a better animal. How do we leverage technology as the industry as a whole? I don’t think that the solution to that issue is going out and putting more USDA inspectors in our plants in order to grade animals like we do in beef. There’s great technology that exists. So I would really look to NPPC and some of our USDA leaders to say, how do we do it differently than beef? And potentially better for the long run, because I know USDA is having trouble getting inspectors in. So how do we take the technology that’s in place for grading and create that incentive for the industry?
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