Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE 12/28/18


The industry has been talking up automation and robotics for more than a decade, but the drip, drip, drip of adoption in beef, pork and poultry plants has never matched the headlines.

The hype has gotten closer to reality in the past year, however, driven in large part by a desperate need for skilled and unskilled workers. Actual installation of labor-saving automation in the industry is more like a small-but-growing stream.

“We are finding that the investment in automation in U.S. plants is increasing significantly. I would say [that] since last year, we are seeing consistent growth,” says Jorge Izquierdo, vice president, market development, PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. “And it’s not just putting in new technology because [companies] want to cut labor or labor costs. The investment in automation technology is [industry] trying to address the issue of reduced labor availability.”

The meat and poultry processing industry in the United States added 28,000 jobs in the 24 months that ended in June 2018, according to a research report by Christine McCracken, executive director and protein analyst with Rabobank. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, has dropped to 3.7 percent nationally from 4.9 percent nationally in mid-2016. The rate is slightly higher in non-metro areas than in cities, but it nevertheless has been halved since its post-Great Recession peak of more than 10 percent, according to USDA.

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