THE nation’s largest beef processing facility is on track to return to full 3400 head per day production capacity by January next year.

JBS Australia’s Dinmore plant west of Brisbane has operated at reduced output due to labour challenges since the COVID era, and has not operated at full two-shift capacity since the 2019-20 high-turnoff drought period.

JBS announced plans to attempt to build a second daily processing shift back in September 2023, having operated only a single daily shift for the preceding two or three years. The timing of that announcement came as slaughter cattle numbers began to recover after earlier drought impact on the national herd.

The second shift, dividing the plant’s workforce into two smaller teams until more staff could be added, started work in February this year.

It’s been a long and challenging effort, but 12 months after the initial announcement, JBS is now close to reaching its Dinmore labour/processing capacity objective.

In total, JBS has recruited more than 700 additional staff over the past 12 months to work at the plant, taking the full staff complement at the facility to 2000 full time employees.

Raising additional team members has come via a number of channels, with a determined push to recruit within the local Ipswich regional community, including more school-leavers; Pacific Island Labour Mobility (PALM Scheme) recruiting out of the ten participating countries including Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu; and 482 Skilled Worker visa holders across other parts of the world.

Under current arrangements, Dinmore operates two extended daily shifts, working four days each week, with each shift being 9.5 hours.

Brendan Tatt

JBS Northern Division chief operating officer Brendan Tatt said it had been a massive undertaking not only in finding suitable staff, but also the hours of training that goes into developing new team members. Elsewhere in JBS’s Queensland operations, additional staff have also been added at the Beef City grainfed plant near Toowoomba, which has delivered another 500 head per week.

As part of the staff expansion, JBS is looking at building accommodation for staff at a number of locations, including Dinmore. Supplying accommodation for foreign workers is now a commonplace occurrence within the meat processing industry, out of necessity – tens of millions of dollars that could otherwise be injected into plant upgrades to deliver greater efficiency.

The increase in daily capacity comes after Dinmore and Beef City – along with three other plants in NSW and Queensland – were re-listed for chilled and (or) frozen export to China in May this year.

Heavier carcase weights

While numbers of cattle going through the Dinmore plant is now approaching full capacity, the volume of beef being produced has actually grown compared with earlier times. That’s because average carcase weights at Dinmore have increased, as more heavier grainfed cattle are processed at the plant than in the past.

“This was part of the major redevelopment and circa $80 million investment JBS made over the last two years, to chill and bone that additional weight,” Mr Tatt said.

Average weights may now be 30-40kg heavier than in earlier times, when Dinmore processed a wide range of cattle types from bulls and cows to export ox.

Labour challenges have capped Australian beef processing numbers to about 140,000 head per week this year (NLRS weekly slaughter numbers), but additional daily capacity at plants like Dinmore and Beef City, and further south at Thomas Foods International’s Murray Bridge plant in South Australia will inevitably help lift industry capacity next year.

TFI Murray Bridge pushing into US market

Over the weekend, TFI’s group general manager for sales and marketing Jonathan Bayes was joined by South Australian Minister for Trade and Investment Joe Szakacs to discuss the significant increase in South Australian beef being exported to the United States over the past year.

A large contributor to that was the completion of stage one of TFI’s Murray Bridge beef processing facility in the state’s southeast, now being fully commissioned and processing 3000 head of cattle a week, Mr Bayes said.

Paired with the growing demand for high quality and claims-based beef products, this had resulted in an almost-four-fold increase in South Australian beef being exported to the US, the pair said.