Dematic has transformed a family-owned Australian beef producer’s business operations, enhancing its efficiency, productivity, accuracy, safety, and competitiveness to ensure its readiness for the evolving demands of global beef markets.
It notes John Dee’s Warwick-based processing plant in Queensland, strategically located on the Darling Downs, just two hours from the port of Brisbane, is instrumental in supplying premium beef cuts to more than 145 customers in over 37 export markets worldwide.
“We’ve been a beef processor in Warwick since 1945, and today we’ve transformed into a full-blown beef export and processing operations,” explains John Hart, Owner of John Dee, Warwick.
“In the early days, we sold full sets of meat parts, whereas today we break them up and send different components to Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, the EU, and America.”
Across four generations, Dematic says John Dee has consistently upheld a commitment to uncompromising quality and service. Over the years, it has evolved from a local beef producer into a major beef exporter servicing a diverse range of international markets.
“With the way we’re operating today, trying to get product into the right place at the right time, it was becoming almost impossible to do it by hand,” says John.
“In our previous manual operation, people had to understand all the product codes, and pick by hand out of a cold store. With over 10,000 cartons being produced a day, it became a logistical nightmare. A thousand cartons a year that would go out of date because they couldn’t be located.”
With growing demand, especially from international markets, John Dee faced a critical challenge. The company had outgrown its existing storage capacity, and manual operations were proving inadequate to meet the complexity and scale of its production.
To learn more about what the Dematic and John Dee partnership has achieved, read the full case study.
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