Based in Warrnambool, Midfield Meats has been a local hub for jobs and growth in the area since 1975. Today, it is also a major player in the domestic and export market, with beef, lamb, veal, mutton and their by-products traversing Australia and the globe.
As a wholly Australian owned and operated company, Midfield has implemented a strong supply chain largely sourced from within the local region, enabling them to provide clean and green food consistently. B&R find many visionary comparisons with Midfield, who also believe in instigating mutually beneficial growth opportunities for Australia in an increasingly global marketplace.
To accommodate that growth, Midfield announced a $20 million upgrade earlier in the year, to be rolled out over a two year period. Improving efficiencies required Midfield to upgrade their cooker equipment. The cookers assist with rendering animal by-products that cannot enter the food chain by processing them into stable, value-added materials.
A challenge of the upgrade was removing the existing cooker, which was to be refurbished and re-commissioned, and scheduling the board expansion required for the cooker once it was put back in operation. Brendan Maloney, Midfield’s maintenance electrician, formulated a project brief driven by scalability, flexibility and control.
The need to stage the project and control the associated roll-out costs demanded an enclosure solution that enabled temporary equipment power while transitioning the cooker, and then a permanent, robust power solution to handle the upgraded, refurbished equipment.
B&R’s iLINQ was selected as a modular and flexible solution that was fit-for-purpose and addressed the plant’s needs. With a medium term plan to scale the board to 6 tiers and house it in an outdoor switch room, Brendan has been able to begin the upgrade using a single iLINQ tier located indoors to temporarily power the single cooker.
This enabled the plant to continue production as normal without any downtime building new infrastructure. According to Brendan, the advantage of the iLINQ design lies in its flexibility and ability to be quickly arranged to suit specific requirements. Expanding the board once the cooker is recommissioned has been confidently planned and managed with B&R using standard iLINQ components. Built to withstand challenging environments like the meatworks, iLINQ also enabled the project flexibility to deal with unforeseen changes and scalability in design.
