Conestoga Meats
From handwritten ledgers to high-tech pork production
Nestled in the quiet town of Breslau, Ontario, Conestoga Meat Packers began as a small pork abattoir in 1982. Back then, they processed just 500 hogs a day. In 2001, a major shift happened. A group of land-based pork farmers, known as the Progressive Pork Producers Co-operative Inc., bought the plant. Their goal? To vertically integrate and take control of processing their own animals.
Today, Conestoga is still farmer-owned, but much more than a local business. The company now runs a BRC-certified facility, processing more than 9,000 hogs daily. With over 1,400 employees in harvest, cut production, and distribution, they produce 225 million kilograms of pork annually. Their products ship worldwide — including chilled pork specifically developed for the Asian market.
The challenge: outdated systems and manual processes
Company President, Arnold Drung laughs when he recalls the level of technology when the producers purchased the company, “There was a DOS-based accounting system on its last legs and that was about it. Everything at the plant had been done by hand.” Key processes like planning, sales and production were tied to specific individuals to complete and not systematized. Conestoga had a vision for what they wanted to achieve and understood that technology would play a key factor in those plans.
The team evaluated multiple systems and determined that CSB understood their business and had key features that were required. These included the ability to capture both catch and fixed weights, cut process trees to determine yield and contribution margins by product, as well as integrated finance, livestock data collection and producer payments. 23 years later, Conestoga continues to grow as well as their use of the CSB-System.
Choosing CSB: a partner who spoke “Meat”
Conestoga began their search for a full ERP/MES platform in late 2002. It became very clear that many of the software offerings did not even have a solid understanding of what was required for a meat facility. Arnold recalls, “The companies we were speaking to had no understanding of disassembly, livestock payments, yields; most did not even have the capability to deal with catch weight for inventory, something that is pretty essential when you sell by the kilogram. With CSB, we knew very quickly that they understood what we do and more importantly, had lots of experience in Pork.”
Conestoga was not just looking for a short-term solution but a long-term partner that they could grow with. CSB’s modular approach and ever evolving software offerings has allowed Conestoga to build out their solutions as they required them, even when it came to integration with equipment or other systems. According to IT Manager Andrew Sullivan, “One of CSB’s greatest benefits for us is the ability to take multiple hardware or software data streams into the system. This provides us with a single accurate source of truth that we report from. CSB is the digital anchor of Conestoga from the plant floor all the way to the office.”
Building the solution: data from barn to box
As Conestoga grew, the need for a new world class harvest facility became a necessity. The question was, how much critical data capture could Conestoga automate through the harvest process? Team members visited CSB solutions throughout Europe to learn what the system was doing at other CSB pork customers. They were looking at data points like hog leanness grading, pH capture, deviations, multiple scale points through the process, and then tracking the cooler shrink from before the cutting and carcass breakdown. This would need to be done to the individual hog. The goal was to amalgamate all that information and provide the producers with hyper-accurate report cards about their animals. Now, the producer group can share quality information and make changes based on hard data to continually improve Conestoga’s quality and yields.
The innovative Harvest floor solution is aided by the use of QR coded gambrels, once the hog is hung and the corresponding tattoo number in entered through an integration with the receiving barn. A unique identifier within CSB is created and the data is then captured on a per hog basis that is written directly into the system database. Data collection points through the process have QR code scanners, which remove the need to have Conestoga team members manually enter results. This saves on labor and avoids input errors that would need correcting. This progresses through the dressing process until the hog exits the holding cooler before the next day’s carcass cut.
Combining modern technologies makes Conestoga state of the art
This solution is a combination of CSB’s CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) EBS solution connected to scales, barcode scanners and integrated hardware that facilitates the data capture directly into the system through the livestock and inventory modules. The system can then tie the hog data directly to the producer. The Conestoga team then utilizes the CSB Data Warehouse reporting in conjunction with a homegrown web application to create producer specific score cards that can be logged into and viewed by the producer. Some of these data points are then used for producer payments which need to be paid out within 48 hours.
Digital solutions like this make Conestoga one of the most advanced pork facilities in all North America.
Utilizing the system in new ways
Conestoga has one of North America’s most proficient and knowledgeable user bases. This has enabled their team to utilize the system is new ways and even lead to programming and module changes with their internal successes. While Conestoga now uses the CSB Data Warehouse outputs to build their reporting, Andrew Sullivan’s team was one of the first to connect directly into the CSB database and create their own reporting structure and tools. This allowed for complex sales, production, and financial reporting that took the real-time CSB data and populated it into interactive dashboards providing up-to-date information to every division of Conestoga Meats. The team figuratively “owns” their CSB solution and when new projects are proposed, one of the first questions asked is “how can we leverage CSB for this?“
High level of quality and traceability
Conestoga prides itself on the quality of its pork. With certain customers, especially those in Asia, that quality is constantly evaluated and held to a high standard. The harvest floor data collection project allows Conestoga and its producers to correlate data points like feed and genetics, plus be able to see how that quality is affected with empirical data points. Changes can be tracked over time and the producers to see how process changes in rearing are being directly reflected in processing.
With serialization, Conestoga has control of their inventory down to the case level. This is essential to the traceability process. One of their major advantages is their BRC (British Retail Consortium) certification when it comes to dealing with their customers. A very important part of the audits to maintain the certification are mock recalls. Conestoga can perform these for evaluators in just a few seconds. This is due to having control of processes from procurement and harvest, all the way to serialized cases and combos to the final customer.
Real results: better data, better business
In an industry that has, until more recently, been resistant to digitization, companies like Conestoga are able to thrive because they can make data driven decisions. Sales figure, break-even and product contribution margin analysis paired with market trends allows the Conestoga team to constantly evaluate pricing. This balance of costs and sales gives Conestoga clear insight into their returns by customer. Cost bearer calculation through cut trees is the basis for roll up costs that shed light where Conestoga is benefiting or losing down to the item level. Even the ability to automate sales order entry with EDI exchanges from some of their largest grocery customers avoids time consuming data entry and potential errors.
In the commodity market, the stronger understanding of every cost in the process permits Conestoga to remain competitive and grow.
Looking forward: more Integration, more Insight
Conestoga continues to have high goals for the company. With some potential changes to their cut floor, they are looking at how CSB can integrate with other automation tools to potentially direct products to specific lines based on cut requirements. Adding more visualization and data collection within production is also key as a long-term goal. The biggest short term gain is the movement to MERP Android for all mobile inventory and picking processes. After over 20 years as a customer, Conestoga continues to invest in their CSB solution and partnership for the future.