Progress In Handling Of Stock By-products

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 11

Progress In Handling Of Stock By-products

Abount £60,000 has been >pent by the Canterbury ByeProducts Company, Ltd., at its works at Sockbum in the last year to make its products more acceptable to overseas markets and to facilitate the handling of raw materials. Christchurch butchers are shareholders in the company, products of which go to many parts of the world. Some 200 persons, including some from Invercargill and Palmerston North, inspected the improvements at the works and also at the Christchurch abattoir on Saturday morning. The butchers also administer the abattoir by deed of delegation from the Christchurch City Council.

Among the visitors were Mr M. A. Connelly, M.P., Mr M. R. Carter, a member of the Christchurch City Council, and the Town Clerk (Mr C. S. Bowie) and council officers. All inedible offals from killings at the abattoir—bones, fat, heads, and feet and condemned animals—and bones and fat from butchers’ shone come to the by-products works. Formerly they were hoisted to the upper floor at the works in sacks and drums and then tipped by hand down vents into the cookers below. Now it is all done by pressing a button. Two screw conveyors -arry the materials to the first floor where belt conveyors take them to the holding bins above the cookers. These bins also have screw conveyors to feed out into the cookers below. Each of the six cookers is now connected to an air condenser to eliminate pollution of the atmosphere, and all steam required is now provided by oil-fired boilers. The works have also recently been connected to the sewer.

Bulk Tallow

A major development has been the change from handling tallow in drums to bulk handling. Three big storage tanks hold a total of 450 tons of tallow—-this is believed to be the largest holding capacity in the South Island—and up to 280 tons can be moved a day to Lyttelton in six tankers carrying 10 tons each. These road tankers are operated by two private contractors.

Tallow from the works goes to many parts of the world, but recently major buyers have been Communist China and Japan. The visitors to the works were particularly interested by the recent developments in the casings department. Runners—the intestines of sheep, lambs and pigs—for use in this department are drawn from all parts of the South Island, except Nelson, and the company also has a casings plant at Palmerston North which draws raw ma-

terials from the major abattoirs in the North Island, apart from Auckland and Welt lington.

Women operate the machines on which the casings are run on to plastic tubes. After a brief curing period these casings are graded principally on millimetre width and packed in plastic bags with 12 tubes to a hank containing a 100 yd length. One hundred and forty of these hanks go into a cardboard container which is placed in a wooden box. Keen Demand Casings are valuable, and a box with a gross weight of 1001 b is worth about £2OO. There is a keen demand for sheep and lamb casings in the United States for hot dogs, and America is the main market, but they also go to England and the Continent. Speaking to the visitors at the works the chairman of the company (Mr W. S. Hughes) said that the new method of processing casings was in line with modern trends overseas. The new method is much more attractive to customers. Formerly about 500 hanks were packed in a wooden cask. The plastic tubes are also handy for sausage making. The tube with the casing on goes into the sausage filler nozzle and then the tube is withdrawn leaving the casing on the nozzle. Mr Hughes said that the company was proud of the plant. It was a butchers' cooperative enterprise and it was endeavouring to keep up with overseas requirements.

First Chain At the city abattoir the new sheep and lamb killing chain, which has now been in operation for about a year, was inspected. The abbattoir is the first in the country to go in for chain killing. Here £20,000 has been spent by the Christchurch City Council in installing the chain and in new building, including a new amenity block for the men, and another £5OOO on a new boiler.

The by-products company and its associated companies now have an annual turn-over approaching £2m.