3 Challenges for OEMs Building for the Poultry Industry  

Mikkel Svold:
Hello and welcome to Behind Clean Lines, the podcast for you if you take food safety seriously. Now, today we are again joined by the good Nate Harrison from the US-based Phoenix Innovations, who designs and builds equipment for the poultry industry. Nate, welcome back to the show.

Nate Harrison:
Thank you, Mikkel. I appreciate you having me back.

Mikkel Svold:
Now, in the last episode, we talked about design choices and how to build for cleanliness and how to build processing equipment for the poultry industry. Now today, we want to zoom out a little bit and look at some of the more overarching challenges that you see coming for OEMs in the poultry industry. Are you good to dive into this topic now?

Nate Harrison:
Yes, sir.

Mikkel Svold:
Perfect. So we discussed these challenges. We have three challenges coming up, so we discussed them a little bit beforehand. And challenge number one, you've identified automation versus manual labor. Can you try and explain what you mean by that? Why is that a challenge?

Nate Harrison:
It can be a challenge because the labor market, at least here in the US, it comes and goes based on current economic conditions. At certain times, you'll have high labor availability, and at other times, you'll have low labor availability. Now, the difference that makes in a poultry plant, when you automate a process, it may not be as efficient from a yield standpoint or from a results-driven standpoint as manual labor is. So when you're deboning a chicken, manual labor typically is going to yield higher than the automated process for deboning a chicken.
And so when we talk about automation and manual labor, the labor market and the rates that you have to pay to get that labor versus the yield that the plant is going to realize from going to an automated process or using manual labor is always a factor that we have to consider when we're designing equipment. How automated do we go? Do we continue to provide the most accurate and highest yielding products available, or do we design for automated runtime versus manual operation?

Mikkel Svold:
And you say that the yield from manually filleting, I guess a chicken, how come the machines can't keep up? Is it the precision?

Nate Harrison:
It has to do with precision, but think about every bird that comes into that plant. You can say that every bird weighs six pounds when it gets to a plant. Okay? Or two and a half kilograms. Right? But at the end of the day, every bird is different slightly. And so a human can realize that difference as they're filleting that bird. A machine only sees a bird and it can say, "Okay, well, it's in this size range, but it's going to make the same cut, the same precision cut every single time." The bird is not going to be the same size every single time. So you may leave meat on the bone, where a human can realize that.

Mikkel Svold:
And now there's a lot of buzz around AI and image recognition and all this. Do you see artificial intelligence coming into this job or this task in a food production plant? Because that would then, I'm guessing, be able to adjust the knives of the machine to fit the bird better, no?

Nate Harrison:
It can. It just depends on how the machine is designed. Does the machine have the articulating capability where AI can send it the message that says, "Hey, you need to move slightly?"

Mikkel Svold:
Of course.

Nate Harrison:
Does the machine have that capability or not? But AI is going to revolutionize a lot of industries. It's going to have to be done in a very regimented manner. So as the development of AI increases, we're going to see some amazing developments in automation in poultry plants. And even what we were just talking about, the automatic filleting machines, they've gotten so much better. They're very close to what a human can do. They're still just not quite there, but with the addition of AI, the vision grading, all of the different things, over the next 10 years, what AI can do in this industry is going to be very interesting to watch.

Mikkel Svold:
And how is the incentive to invest in this technology? Because I didn't realize, but of course, the machines, the actual cutting machines, they have to be adaptable as well. They have to be compatible with some sort of robotic arm, whatever thing that can control the knives in more detail. However, that requires probably many places, new machines, again, and they're of course not free, right?

Nate Harrison:
That's correct.

Mikkel Svold:
So do you see that transition coming quickly or is it going to be a slow move?

Nate Harrison:
Well, I see the transition coming quickly in specific parts of the plant, parts of the plant that aren't going to need a machine to move slightly for articulation. We can talk about the packaging in a plant and the vision, the way packaging... Because robotic packaging is getting so big, where you're taking a human's hands off of that meat and the robot is picking it up. Smart Robotics and a couple of the other companies, or Soft Robotics are doing some of the different things where they're actually physically picking up and packing it, and then they're sending it through the overwrap machines.
AI is going to make that wonderful because as the vision technology comes out and it's more compatible with the robotic arms, I think we're going to see some amazing developments on the packaging side. I think that on the hover chilling side, the air chilling side, the vision grading and different things like that are going to make it very, very different than what we see even today.

Mikkel Svold:
Now, one thing that might push this development is of course, the availability of labor. How is the market right now of the labor market? Is there labor available? Are there people out there looking for a job? And how do you see it in the coming three to five years?

Nate Harrison:
So about 10 years ago, the CEO of one of the largest poultry companies in the United States said, "Nate, what do you see the biggest problem for our industry over the next 20 years?" And my answer was, "Labor." He agreed, and I felt like I had done something. I'm like, "Hey, the CEO of a very large company agrees with a 35-year-old kid." Right? Well-

Mikkel Svold:
Perfect.

Nate Harrison:
So when you look at that, Mikkel, that's a difficult question to answer because yes, unemployment in the United States right now is extremely low. However, the next generation of kids, it's not glamorous to go work in a chicken plant. It's not a glamorous job. Kids aren't coming out and saying, "Hey, I'm going to go work in the chicken plant." And so the problem is there. It can be a very lucrative career, and the chicken business has fed my family for 24 years now. And maybe it's not as glamorous as people think it is, but it's a wonderful employment. But labor in general, your hourly team members at these facilities, yes, labor is available and post-COVID, it has now come back to what we're going to call pre-COVID numbers, which is very helpful for the industry.

Mikkel Svold:
Yeah, I think the same goes at least for Denmark. Available labor is just... Yeah, unemployment is at an all-time low still. Yeah. So I think it's the same challenge. And I think that also concludes the first of these challenges, the automation versus labor. It depends, that's what I'm hearing. It depends on where it is, where in the plant, and also what sort of task it is, right?

Nate Harrison:
That's correct. And it sounds like I didn't answer the question, but the labor versus automation question, yes, we are moving towards more automation. A machine shows up every day, and that's the hard part, but it sounds callous towards the human. Well, I'm not trying to give up jobs here. Okay? We're trying to create better jobs for people who can now assist with the robots, who can become automation technicians. Are we providing additional training for employees so that they can upscale their job opportunity in conjunction with this automation? Yes. That's what we want to do.

Mikkel Svold:
And I actually think that's a really good segue into challenge number two that you've identified, namely the increased bird size and the faster line speed. What do you mean by that and what is the development and why is it a challenge?

Nate Harrison:
Well, as you look at the US consumer base and what we're doing with our products, ready-to-eat product is getting very big. So the larger birds that you grow can be filleted and then put into those ready-to-eat products. Right? You get that bag at the grocery store. You take it home, you dump it into an air fryer tray, or you take it home, you pop it into the microwave, you're able to put together a stir-fry meal, a healthy meal for your family, comes out of a bag. Well, that's coming from a big chicken. That big chicken's now been processed. It's been cut up. It's been individually portioned into that bag. It goes into a recipe mix.
So as you see the ready-to-eat market and the consumer market change, especially in the US, you're going to see larger birds grown because the smaller birds typically go for your fast food, for your whole birds. Rotisserie birds are also very popular right now, where you're going to cook that whole bird at the facility at a Costco or a Walmart here in the US. And so those products are increasing, but when you talk about the larger bird, it's mainly going into your further processed products. And so heavier birds and increased line speeds because the facilities have gotten so clean from an inspection standpoint that now there's new inspection services going on in the United States, there's less inspectors on the line. These plants have been able to prove that we can provide pathogen-free chicken at a very high rate of speed to keep up with the demand of the United States consumer and the world consumer.

Mikkel Svold:
And the reason why I connected with the labor challenges, of course, well, the demand is also increasing, so it's going to be harder even for manual labor to keep up, I'm guessing. Is that correct?

Nate Harrison:
It can be, yes. There are jobs in a poultry plant that only people can do, and they are tough jobs. When you're hanging poultry in the back of the plant, you're hanging nine and 10-pound birds over and over and over and over, and that's hard on shoulders, arms, ergonomically. It can become very difficult on employees. And so as you increase line speeds and as you increase weights, it does become difficult. The manual labor aspect increases in certain parts of the plant.

Mikkel Svold:
Now, the challenge, if we look at it from an OEM standpoint, what does it mean to the OEM, to the people like you providing equipment for the factories?

Nate Harrison:
It means that I have to get additional throughput in the same footprint, which means that I've got to put more pounds through the equipment I design without making a larger footprint. How do I do that? What sort of technology do I use to continue to increase throughput? Because the buildings aren't getting any bigger. If they build a new plant, yes, you've got all the room in the world to plan and to upsize your equipment, but if I'm going into an existing facility that's got to run more pounds in the exact same space, those can provide problems for the OEM. How do we match the line speeds and the throughput without adding any links or room inside of our own machine?

Mikkel Svold:
And how do you do that? Do you do the big cities where you build... You stack people on top of each other, you build different floors, or what do you do?

Nate Harrison:
There's a lot to be said for civic planning, but we do not use that very much in the OEM equipment market

Mikkel Svold:
Figure of speech.

Nate Harrison:
We have to find more efficient methods to process this poultry or these products that are coming to us through our machines. And if we find more efficiency, if we find better ways to do things, then we're going to succeed. And so whether that be designing a little bit wider belt or whether that be designing a more efficient method of injecting... Our poultry injectors are our big product, how do we get more throughput through that machine? Well, you know what? We have to find more efficient technology. We have to look at different valves, we have to look at different speeds, we have to look at different motors. Everything has to come into play as we concentrate on that throughput.

Mikkel Svold:
Now, heading on straight into challenge three, again, is a pretty good segue you made there. So we have flexibility, adaptability of the machine design. Now, we are again talking about the OEMs. So what are their challenges? So the machine design, the flexibility to accommodate the product development, but I guess also, this continuously changing of the bird, basically, try and put some word on this flexibility, adaptability, challenge. Why is that hard and what can you do?

Nate Harrison:
Well, flexibility and adaptability is something that I usually equate it to this. Does your company turn like a battleship or does your company turn like a speedboat? Because right now in our industry, if you don't have agility, then your customer is going to suffer. If you can't make the immediate changes to adapt a plant to what they need right then, then you're slowing them down, you're costing them money, and you are not efficiently helping your customers.

Mikkel Svold:
And here, you're talking about the food producers, the brand owners, basically.

Nate Harrison:
That is correct. Now, as far as the world market is concerned, or as far as the consumer, in the United States, we're approaching almost 100 pounds of poultry consumed per year per consumer. That's a massive amount. So Americans are eating 100 pounds of chicken a year per person, essentially is what we're saying.

Mikkel Svold:
Wow.

Nate Harrison:
Okay? Now, chicken is still the lowest cost protein in the world. Poultry is something that needs to continue to be produced at reasonable pricing so that the masses can be fed a valuable protein, a healthy protein, something that we can continue to nourish our kids, that we can put in school lunches, that we can bring home, and parents can for their children at a reasonable price, can give them plenty of nutrition so they can get the caloric content that they need on a daily basis. But if you think about the global market, poultry ends up in the finest restaurants in Los Angeles and it ends up in relief packages in the poorest places in the world.
Poultry, in my opinion, is the most important protein right now that we can provide at that cost. Beef and pork are also extremely important proteins. The fluctuation of price in that market right now has been a little bit different, but poultry is also increasing. We have to find a way to provide reasonably cost protein, and we have to be able to do it in a way that the world can still access it. And so, go ahead.

Mikkel Svold:
Yeah, and that again, puts pressure on the food producers, so the brand owners. But how does that pressure dribble down on the OEMs, I'm wondering.?

Nate Harrison:
We have to continue to develop equipment that will produce safe food at the correct flavor profile, with the correct throughputs so that we do not slow down our consumers. We need to stay ahead of our customers in development and innovation so that they can continue to produce high quality food at the right levels to maintain what we need to feed our growing food consumers.

Mikkel Svold:
I think let those be the last words. They were very, very nice. So we have the three challenges to summing up real quick. So we have the challenge, which was automation versus labor. Look out for that. We have the increasing of the bird sizes and the faster line speeds and all this, the bigger throughput, so to say. And of course, the flexibility to follow the consumer trends, and also to produce different kinds of things and how that need for flexibility and product development, how that dribbles down onto the OEMs and the equipment that you guys here produce.
Now, Nate Harrison, once again, thank you so much for being with us. It was a real pleasure. And to you, all the listeners out there, if you have any questions whatsoever or suggestions for future topics or, well, anything you just want to say to us, please reach out on podcast@ngi-global.com. And that was podcast@ngi-global.com. It's a real tongue twister. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with your colleagues or whoever you think might be interested. It really helps us spread this, the word so to say. And yeah, just help us do what we do. With that, I just want to say thank you so much for listening.