Customer Case

Betagro Poultry Integration Business

BETAGRO GROUP

Safe Food for Life

Betagro Group, founded in 1967, is one of Thailand’s leaders in integrated agricultural business covering animal feed, livestock, animal health products and food. The contribution of over 25 subsidiaries with more than 15,000 employees provides high operational capacity from animal farming and breeding to the distribution of processed and frozen food. Betagro Group produces high quality food products such as fresh chicken meat, frozen cooked chicken, fresh pork meat, soup base, eggs and made-to-order products to serve both domestic and international markets.

Challenge,Government regulations and customer food safety protocols are increasingly stringent and differ between regions and customers. Traceability laws and regulations continue to be enforced in many large food importing countries e.g. EU, Japan, USA, etc. Due to its diverse business, Betagro Group already had a traceability system in each of its operations. However, the systems were in different formats and on various software applications (BPCS, ACCPAC, in-house legacy systems, spreadsheets) including paper-based systems. To accommodate the growing size and complexity of its business, Betagro Group needed a solution that would enable them to quickly access trace information throughout its integrated business to ensure each step of the production process is of high quality and satisfies domestic and international stakeholders. Betagro also wanted a solution to improve information exchange with existing systems while providing the flexibility to replace paper-based systems and to meet unfulfilled traceability requirements. Betagro Group’s Poultry integration business was identified as the first priority in implementing FXA’s OpsSmartTM integrated traceability system. Selected Betagro Group companies were:

• B. FOODS PRODUCT INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
  A joint venture between Betagro Group and Mitsubishi Corporation Company Limited of Japan to produce both processed frozen and fresh chicken and ready-to-eat food products for export. To control the whole production chain, it also oversees parent stock farms and hatcheries with most of its production base housed in Lop Buri.
  
• BETTER FOODS CO., LTD
  With its plant in Samut Prakarn, the company manufactures processed food products including meatballs and sausages for domestic supply, and portioned fresh and frozen chicken for export to its broiler chicken farms, parent stock farms and hatcheries based in Lop Buri and Nakhon Ratchasima. It is also responsible for providing raw materials to the plant. Their farms are based in Lop Buri and Nakhon Ratchasima.
  
• BTG FEED MILL CO., LTD
  Located in Lop Buri, it produces and distributes animal feed especially for broiler chickens raised under Betagro-owned farms and contracted farms.
  Regional Business
  o BETAGRO NORTHERN AGRO-INDUSTRY CO., LTD
  o BETAGRO SOUTHERN CO., LTD
  o BETAGRO AGRO INDUSTRY CO., LTD
  Responsible for the Group’s integrated agro-industrial business in other regions of Thailand. Business includes both swine and layer chicken farming and contract broiler farming -over 1,000 farmhouses on 700+ contracted broiler farms throughout Thailand.
  
• BETTER PHARMA CO., LTD
  A producer and distributor of animal health products, chemical products, pet care products and aquatic animal products.

Annually, over 50 million eggs are supplied from Betagro’s12 Parent Stock farms with 140+ farmhouses to their own hatcheries. Betagro-owned farms and contract farms also raise approximately 70 million broilers using poults, feeds and vaccines/medicines supplied mainly from their own group while the remaining supplies required are sourced from other local suppliers. The majority of those broilers are then supplied to their own processing plants with a production capacity exceeding 120,000 tons/year.

Solution FXA Professional services team known as BUDDY (Business Doctor DeploYment) teamed up with Betagro for planning and implementation to ensure food safety and quality assurance goals were met.

Implementations were divided into 7 projects according to operation types:

• Parent Stock Farms
• Hatcheries
• Feed Mills
• Pharmaceuticals
• Broiler Farms
• Slaughter House
• Further Processing
  

With FXA’s OpsSmartTM Solution, each operation had the flexibility to define the critical processes, linkages, item-associated information sets, and trace criteria that worked best for each operation.

Parent stock farms required vaccination/ medication records, lab tests, and animal welfare data to be on the traceability information system. It required data from material receipts, egg production and shipments which already existed in the legacy farm accounting system.

Betagro’s Further Processing plant required a data capture at each of their CCPs (Critical Control Points). Required CCP data capture included: cooking temperature, metal detection, microbiological and other lab tests obligatory for exported products, and other process inspection data which could be routed to raw materials or finished product batches.

OpsSmartTM solutions were configured to fit the diverse traceability requirements of each of Betagro’s seven businesses and their existing information systems. OpsSmartTM EDE (Electronic Data Exchange) module streamlined data exchange with legacy systems while FXA’s OpsSmartTM traceability system was implemented without major modifications or reimplementation of legacy/ERP systems.

Betagro chose OpsSmartTM as a hosted Application Service Provider (ASP) model so applications could be accessed regardless of geographic location. For Broiler farm operations, inputs were collected from 1000+ farmhouses located throughout Thailand. Betagro farm inspectors spent most of their time visiting contracted farms to monitor performance, ensure feed-drugs usage compliance, provide recommendations and collect/ validate data required for trace. It was important for the inspectors to provide up-to-date broiler health information to the Betagro veterinarian team. When visiting farms located in the remote area without stable/ economical internet connection, Betagro farm inspectors input data through Pocket PC or notebooks installed with OpsSmartTM Lite for off-line data entry. OpsSmartTM supported multiple languages so all entry screens were in Thai allowing for comfortable use of the system.

Since implementation, Betagro can quickly view trace information within each operation and throughout the entire poultry integration chain from feed production, breeders raising, hatching, chicken production to chicken processing plants. TraceItSmartTM enables Betagro to explore data in a multidimensional manner and to trace by item identification or other item-related attributes such as machine number, farm location, and production time at any point in the operations either forward or backward.

BENEFITS

Secure Market Access

OpsSmartTM food traceability solution assures Betagro’s compliance to government regulatory and customer protocols. Betagro is able to meet traceability requirements based upon a one-up-one down principle and beyond. Cooked chicken meat from Further Process can be traced back not only to where the chickens were slaughtered, but also to which farms the chickens were raised. Some customers require this information for each container shipped. The ability to keep up with these increasingly strict regulations and customer demands helps secure Betagro’s market access.

Increase Customer Confidence

The implementation of the OpsSmartTM on-line traceability system demonstrates Betagro’s commitment and ability to produce and deliver safe, quality foods. It reveals transparency of processes and enables Betagro to rapidly respond to local authorities and customers. Consider Better Pharma as an example. In March 2005, a Better Pharma customer called at 6:00 PM to report a problem with a lot produced in October 2004. Quality assurance staffs were able to trace all lot-related information within a few minutes and to provide appropriate feedback. Without FXA’s OpsSmartTM on-line traceability system, the customer would have had to wait for a response until the next morning after employees searched through thousands of documents.

This well-managed traceability information system builds customer confidence in Betagro’s control over quality and the safety of produced lots. The customer can also gain automatic access to traceability information depending on the business relationship.

Improve Operational Efficiency

Traceability for Betagro Slaughter House and Further Processing plant has always been mandatory. Requirements go beyond country of origin. Safety information such as E.coli, Campylobacter, and other lab test results associated with product batch is also required by the government prior to issuing health certificates for exported products. Also, prior to each product release, Further Process QA verifies lab test results of finished products, used raw chicken meats/ingredients and takes corrective action on any non-complying batches.

Approximately 3,000 batches of 150 SKUs are manufactured at Further Processing plant monthly, with slightly higher figures at Slaughter House. With Betagro’s previous system, documents were filed by day under for each production and QA unit. To get complete information of a chicken meat batch, it would take 10-15 people at least 30 minutes each to search for related production and quality records for recently produced batches. For batches produced over a month ago, documents are archived in a document storage warehouse and it could take days to get all information required. FXA’s OpsSmartTM solution allows Betagro to quickly and accurately access required information by eliminating the need to manually review applications and individual hard copies, saving significant staff time.

Product/Process Enhancement

All steps of the production process are interrelated and have a cumulative impact on the quality and safety of final products. Traceability across the entire chain provides invaluable information for poultry product improvement. The OpsSmartTM solution improves the isolation of source and the extent of safety and quality control problems by allowing the user to trace by different product/process related attributes (item identification, production time, line numbers, etc…).

Consider this interrelated process quality example: the 1st week mortality rate of broilers provides a good indicator of flock survival rate at the end of cycle. A high mortality rate could result from many factors. If hatcheries receive complaints from customers (broiler farms), they can quickly investigate the production and quality records of the problem chick flock and review the performance and history of other farms who received the same chick flock. With this information, the hatcheries can better isolate the source and extent of the problem so that attention can be put on the right product/process.

Reduce IT capital expenditure

The ASP model frees Betagro from the costs of hardware purchases, upgrades and ongoing management of the application. It also provides consistent applications to all users, regardless of geographic location or operating platform.

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