September 8, 2009
                          

Two of the leading players in New Zealand agriculture, Silver Fern Farms and Livestock Improvement (LIC) have jointly developed a pilot programme, which aims to deliver an integrated supply chain from farmer partners of Silver Fern Farms to their international customer partners.

The pilot programme, which begins in September, will involve around 150 farmers and 150,000 lambs for export to Europe, paving the way for an integrated supply chain for red meat that will add significant value to New Zealand's export trade.

The pilot will utilise EID tags to link into MINDA, LIC's herd/flock control system. This is combined with on farm input and production and X-ray analysis from Silver Fern Farms' processing plants, linked back to genetics to provide farmers with an overall market-genetic-production performance measure.

The successful implementation of an integrated supply chain model will enable the partners to meet more sophisticated customer product requirements, improve the performance inventory management along the supply chain and improve on farm performance through the monitoring of the performance of individual animals against customer specifications and benchmarked against other animals.

Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand's leading procurer, processor and marketer of lamb, mutton, beef, venison and associated products to more than 60 countries.

LIC is one of the largest integrated herd improvement organisations in the world with proven data and analysis management.