The Plant & Operations
The Falkland Islands Meat Company (FIMCo) was established in 2003 to operate the newly built sheep and beef processing plant (Sand Bay) which was funded by the Falkland Islands Government to provide a modern facility for the domestic and export markets and to support the diversification of Falkland Islands agriculture which until then was mainly reliant on wool production.
The Sand Bay Plant
Located just outside of Stanley the Falkland Islands capital, Sand Bay is an EU accredited export meat plant (designation FK-01), built in 2001 and commissioned in 2002. It operates between January and May for export production and serves the domestic market all year round. The plant consists of a slaughterhouse, carcass chillers, separate cutting rooms for domestic and export processing, blast freezers and a cold store. In addition, there is a by-products building, where fresh lamb and sheep skins are salted, graded and palletised before being containerised for export shipment. The plant capacity is presently 1,000 sheep/lambs per day.
The Operation
We have a permanent team of twenty staff, including management and maintenance this increases by around fifty seasonal staff for the export season. Sand Bay is approved for export of ovine and bovine to the EU, and co-products to a number of other countries, work is ongoing to gain approvals to new markets.
Processing
Our state-of-the-art production control systems utilise touchscreen computers and bar-code scanners in the slaughter hall, cutting rooms, cold store and dispatch areas these are linked to the main office database, providing real-time information on throughput and yields while maintaining full carcass and product traceability back to the farms of origin. Quality control checks, including CUSUM (cumulative summary) and chemical-lean testing are carried out continuously during production ensuring product specifications are maintained at the highest level. Cuts and packaging are tailored to meet individual customer requirements, and monitored using HACCP and Quality Control systems. Packaging and labelling can be for simple manufacturing to complex supermarket ready products in printed bags with bar-codes and multilingual labelling.