It started in 1957, with Vern and Violet 'Jean' Walsh and a small butcher shop in Carey Park, Bunbury.
Having grown from humble beginnings, V&V Walsh is now one of Western Australia's largest meat processors and last week officially opened the doors of a $50 million fully automated cold store room, attached to its existing processing plant.
Standing three-stories high and covering 4000 square metres, the state-of-the-art facility can chill and blast freeze up to 65,000 cartons of beef, mutton and lamb at a time.
A key component of the cold store room is the 26,000 carton automated sortation system, which provides enhanced accuracy and efficiency for both order picking and associated documentation.
The system is 110m in length, peaks at 14m and has the ability to blast freeze 9000 cartons each day at minus 35 degrees.
Craig Mostyn Group chief executive officer Wayne Crofts said the company's investment in the store room would provide significant benefits to not only V&V Walsh, but its suppliers and customers.
Mr Crofts labelled it a $50m vote of confidence from Craig Mostyn Group and V&V Walsh in the future of WA's cattle, sheep and lamb industry.
"The new facility will increase the capacity of the V&V Walsh operations, enhance its ability to meet the 'just in time' demands for modern global supply chains and help improve efficiency and product quality," Mr Crofts said.
"That provides significant benefits to V&V Walsh, the farmers who supply us with sheep and cattle, and our customers."
The cold store first works with cartons being conveyed across the tunnel from the meat processing plant as soon as produced.
In the tunnel, the system automatically decides if the product is going to go to the plate freezer or Automatic Shuttle Retrieval System (ASRS), all based on the barcode and product.
Products are quick frozen for between 16-24 hours, before the carton is stored in ASRS racking until required for an export order.
When an order is received the product is retrieved from the racking to the automatic robot palletiser, wrapped and then labelled.
It is then stored in the robotic inline racking while building the stock to complete customer container orders.
This system ensures V&V Walsh has clear visibility of the cartons movement through the entire process.
V&V Walsh general manager Brent Dancer said the cold store room took 18 months to build, with the support of local contractors.
He said the facility was a game changer for the company in terms of productivity, throughput, efficiency and competitiveness in export markets for beef, lamb and mutton.
"Almost the entire process is automated until the forklift driver picks up the finished pallet and puts it away in the racking," Mr Dancer said.
"We are running the cold store room with six staff and freezing about 2500 to 3000 cartons each day.
"Whereas before it was a highly manual job, with no automation and about 20-30 people involved in packing pallets.
"Those staff members have been redeployed in other parts of the chain, which has created more value in processing capacity."
Mr Dancer said one of the cold store room's key features was the product quality and speed in which it could be sent to the freezer.
He said in the past this process would involve triple-handling, where staff would pack up cartons and pallets, move them onto a truck and then depalletise.
"Moving the product from the boning room to the freezer now takes about 2.5 minutes," Mr Dancer said.
"The 16 to 24-hour freeze time means the quality of the meat, when it hits the market, has also improved.
"Sometimes when meat is sitting chilled it can take three or four days to get frozen, which can result in that purge (combination of water and meat protein that drains from the meat) in the packet."
The cartons can be held at frozen capacity for as long as needed, however Mr Dancer said they were packed to order.
He said the minute they hit frozen, they were taken out of the facility.
"This allows us to be agile - rather than having to put away pallets, we can put an order into the system, pick different cuts and build a pallet ready for the customer.
"We pack to order and are here to process and get our product into export markets immediately."
Mr Crofts said another benefit was the cost of production was lower, but the yield from the animal's carcase was higher.
He said this meant more product could be frozen compared to before, when there might not have been enough product to create a full pallet.
"We are able to freeze and build cartons as we go," Mr Crofts said.
"So from a recycling perspective, we are using almost 100 per cent of the animal now.
"Everything that is not used is sent to our rendering facilities in Bunbury and Perth and creates either meal or tallow."
Mr Dancer said there was a market for a wide range of beef offals, however, previously high costs of freight and freezing in Perth meant the export sale of certain offals was not financially viable.
"As the process is more efficient and cost-effective, we are able to pack those offals and still make it work," he said.
"Now we are able to diversify and tap into markets such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand - with products such as tendons, aortas and hocks - that we weren't before."
Despite only just finishing the cold storeroom, Craig Mostyn Group and V&V Walsh already have their sights set on what's next.
Mr Dancer said their soon-to-be-announced project would focus on wastewater treatment and unlocking what can be done to help WA farmers and the wider agricultural industry.
He said this would be a staged approach around the environment and would hopefully tap into biogas and possibly fertiliser in the future ensuring a fully integrated waste to energy process.
"The environmental projects are our short-term focus," Mr Dancer said.
"Once these have been commissioned we will look at increasing our lamb and beef boning operations, as well as automated chillers."
Mr Dancer acknowledged that V&V Walsh would need to build on its current workforce before meeting these expectations.
He said a mix of both local and overseas workers would fill those positions.
"Ideally, we would love to fill our workforce with locals, but with the challenge of mining in close proximity it becomes difficult to manage.
"We are investing in our internal training programs where we can give people that have no experience within the red meat industry a career pipeline within our wonderful sector.
"We don't just employ meat workers, we also employ engineers, fitters, electricians, animal husbandry, quality assurance, nurses and physios, accountants, and food scientists.
"We have such a diverse workforce and opportunity for people to venture into a wide variety of career paths."
Mr Dancer said accommodation had remained a challenge in Bunbury and the wider South West region.
He said the company already controlled a number of leased properties and would continue to work with local operators to provide accommodation to workers relocating to the area.
The cold storeroom was opened by WA Agriculture and Food Minister Jackie Jarvis at the Bunbury-based abattoir in front of 100 staff, suppliers and business partners last week.
Ms Jarvis said the new facility was phenomenal and possibly the only one of its kind in WA.
She said it would allow the South West to continue to meet customer demand locally and overseas.
"This is the only abattoir in Australia with a China chilled lamb licence," Mr Jarvis said.
"China is a major market, there are lots more opportunities, but the only thing stopping us from sending more chilled and frozen meat into the world is processing capacity.
"Thank you to Craig Mostyn Group for the investment here to grow this market."
Ms Jarvis said the United Kingdom was also a "perfect match" for WA red meat exports.
"We can process the lamb here, send the legs of the lamb and chops to the UK and the rest of the animal to China," she said.
"This actually allows us to diversify our markets and the State's economy.
"New and diversified overseas markets give WA farmers confidence to invest in their future which is what the industry really needs right now.
"It fits with our commitment to grow the livestock sector and add more value locally."
Development of the cold store received a $700,000 grant from the State government's Value Add Investment Grant Program.
V&V Walsh employs 650 team members at its Bunbury abattoir, which services all major supermarkets and a range of export markets.
The company produces 45 million kilograms of lamb, beef and mutton annually from one million sheep and 70,000 cattle.
Its biggest market for sheep and lamb is China, the Middle East and the United States of America, followed by secondary markets Japan, Korea and Singapore.
Meanwhile, in beef it is Japan and China, with increased enquiries coming from a number of countries within South East Asia and the Middle East.
