AURI 2021

Novel Value Chain Approaches to Overcome Local Meat Processing Bottlenecks

Reason for Seeking External Innovation Partnership: 

Multiple bottlenecks and constraints exist to enhance local and regional meat processing, from slaughter to refrigeration to cutting and packaging. Interest in mobile slaughter units has increased to expand slaughter capacity, and it represents a lower cost processing entry point to meet this bottleneck and connect local producers with local consumers.  However, mobile slaughter processing represents a solution to only one value chain segment versus a total supply chain perspective to meet growing market demand and needs.  A full value chain approach needs to consider nodes such as carcass hanging, freezer/refrigeration space, cutting and wrapping, etc. to overcome supply chain bottlenecks to be a truly competitive and viable solution to enhance local meat processing. 

Innovation to accelerate novel ideas that address a total supply chain view of bottlenecks with a forward looking local meat processing value chain and connectivity to serve local and regional markets is needed.  Innovative approaches that overcome key logistical issues and financing constraints would be a valuable contribution to producers and consumers demanding local products to further explore and potentially implement.

Scope of Solution Space:

AURI seeks collaborative ideas and concepts that can be jointly advanced to share with industry.  Proposing actionable concepts to advance collaborative or cooperative approaches that help overcome key issue areas to help expand investment and create a more efficient and competitive local livestock processing value chain from producer to consumer are desired. For example, could different value chain segments be more collaborative versus vertically integrated to overcome bottlenecks, such as a through a cooperative, membership based model, CSA approaches, etc.  Could other approaches apply to local and regional meat processing to de-risking investment and scale productivity than are typically utilized today.   

Solution Space Not of Interest:

Open to all ideas that would be actionable solutions to explore with local meat processors and producers.