Levin Alliance Group facility gets $500,000 upgrade

Processing offal at the Levin Alliance Group facility which has been upgraded to process more meat and expand market opportunities.

The Alliance Group Levin facility will be processing more meat at its Hamaria Rd premises following a $500,000 upgrade to help the meat processor and exporter break into new pet food markets.

Alliance Group general manager Kerry Stevens said the upgrade allows the processing facility to collect more offal, particularly beef, and provide a greater range of product with wider market potential.

"[We can] collect suitable product, which would previously have been directed to rendering," he said.

Additional beef offal products will include spleen, weasand, aorta, pancreas and trachea.

"Some material will still be rendered but the new pet food facility has enabled a number of items such as lungs to be recovered for pet food."

The only waste material will be manure from stockyards and paunch grass (stomach contents) which goes to a compost operation.

The Levin plant employs about 275 people and there had been no change in staffing levels as a result of the upgrade.

Alliance Group exports more than 15,000 metric tonnes of sheep and lamb inedible and edible offal to customers in 25 countries every year.

Specific volumes at Levin are commercially sensitive, Stevens said.

Its pet food raw material is destined for markets in NZ, US and Europe and these remained the current target markets. The worldwide pet food market is worth US$70 billion.

Alliance Group is a co-operative owned by about 5000 farmer shareholders and is the world's largest processor and exporter of sheep meat.

Its current turnover per annum is $1.5 billion.