A look inside Woolworth's high-tech red meat supply chain Greenstock

This is the daily job of Woolworths' standalone red meat supply chain business, Greenstock, which sources the enormous amount of beef, lamb and pork sold by the country's largest fresh food retailer.

The aim is to offer consistent quality meat in a pick-up-and-go format at the most affordable rate.

Stripping the system of waste and inefficiency is key to that; and knowing the customer demographic to a tee in every single store is the means to that.

So the Greenstock way relies on multigenerational farmer and feedlot suppliers, a team of nine buyers with more than 250 years experience between them, solid partnerships with processors and secondary manufacturers and cutting-edge technology few would know even exists.

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Replenishment and analytics teams systems monitor real-time customer fresh meat demands in every Woolworths store and feed that data back to three main meat production facilities run by Hilton Foods in Melbourne, Brisbane and Bunbury.

At these state-of-the-art facilities, each built at a cost of several hundred million dollars, dozens of highly-automated production lines featuring everything from smart slicing tech guaranteeing consistent portion control to x-ray scanning for food safety turn off scores of pre-packed meat offerings.

Primals come in from Greenstocks' processing partners and at these Hilton centres, the meat is first aged, then cut up and packaged.

A fully automated mince line creates the popular 'fluffy' mince that breaks up easily during cooking, for example.

Next, robots programmed with the 'store pick' or consumer demand data from each individual store select what is required and have it ready to transfer on pallets to the Woolworths distribution centre.

At the Hilton sites in Truganina, Melbourne and Heathwood, Brisbane, automated air-bridges have been built for this transfer.

The Heathwood air-bridge will be put into operation in the first half of this year and will remove approximately 390 truck movements from Brisbane roads each week once it's in use.

The Hilton Bunbury site is different - it actually shares a wall with one of the lamb and beef primary processing partners so the raw materials go through a connection in the wall, removing the need to truck primals between the two sites.

"It's highly complex and completely integrated," Greenstock's managing director Anna Speer said.

And a real eye-opener, even for someone who had worked for many years in the beef industry, she agreed.

From paddock to shelf

The whole process starts with a team of nine livestock buyers based around the country. Woolworths buys only beef that grades Meat Standards Australia. It buys from every state.

Cattle are purchased direct from the producer and via feedlot partners but a small percentage of lamb is bought at saleyards.

"Our livestock buyers engage with 2000 farmers, about 100 feedlots and purchase 8000 to 10000 cattle, 14000 pigs and 24000 lambs each week," Ms Speer said.

Woolworths also purchases a small percentage of supplementary raw material - certain cuts, like rump, the supermarket's commercial team sells more of in proportion to other parts of the carcase.

Greenstock works with 12 processing facilities, strategically located to minimise the transport of live animals. All processing is done to MSA standards.

Along with the three Hilton secondary manufacturing facilities, Woolworths works with a few other smaller facilities who prepare other value-added products such as convenience meals.

Sustainability

Washable and re-usable plastic crates have replaced cartons used for inbound primals and outbound retail-ready trays in one of the many sustainability innovations Woolworths Group has put in place.

This has removed around 2800 tonnes of cardboard from the supply chain annually.

The Brisbane facility has one of the largest rooftop photovoltaic solar installations, which provides around 50 per cent of the site's energy needs.

Paper-based meat trays have also been introduced across Specially Selected and Grass Fed beef ranges. The redesigned packaging uses 75pc less plastic than the previous packaging and helps eliminate 114 tonnes of plastic from the supply chain each year across seven popular beef cuts.

"We all in the red meat value chain have a role to play in making our industry more sustainable and nature positive," Ms Speer said.

"Our livestock farmers have had sustainability in their DNA forever and so we are doing our bit to reduce our footprint at every point in the supply chain."