Day and night since last December, meatworkers had been cutting prime steer and heifer carcasses and inserting a Meat Eating Quality probe to identify marbling levels, Alliance Group technical manager Gary Maclennan said.
The probe harvests data on the eating quality of the carcass.
Alliance Group launched premium programmes for beef and lamb after identifying meat containing intramuscular fat, or marbling, improves the overall eating experience.
"Succulence, tenderness and flavour is really important for consumers," Mr Maclennan said.
Export demand for the premium beef was strong and more was needed.
Alliance began working with AgResearch to find ways to measure marbling in the meat supplied by its farmer shareholders.
Hyperspectral imaging systems were installed in boning rooms about six years ago.
"We really wanted something you could do on the hot carcass, before grading. By getting the information earlier allows you to make better decisions," he said.
Alliance staff began talking to Australian technology start-up business Meat Eating Quality in 2022 and visited an Australian meat plant using the technology.
It was decided to run a six-month trial of the probe technology at its Pukeuri beef chain in Oamaru and its Smithfield lamb chain in Timaru in 2023.
Buoyed by the trial results, Alliance decided to lease more of the technology to install at 12 chains in its network including every lamb plant and every beef plant processing prime steers and heifers.
The last lamb chain to get the new technology operating was Pukeuri this season.
He did not know the cost to lease the probe technology but the cost to install the technology across the plants was less than $1 million.
Alliance was the biggest user of the new technology on lambs in the world, he said.
The probe technology was installed on the sheep chain at the Lorneville plant early last year.
Intramuscular fat levels of meat was influenced by genetics, health, diet and management.
Consequently, data from the new technology would be available to farmers to provide an insight about the quality of their animals, to support them to make more informed decisions about breeding, feeding, and livestock management.
Alliance farmer shareholders with platinum and gold supplier status could access the data, he said.
An intention was for Alliance to share regional benchmarking data with loyal farmers to help them make decisions to create more value on their farms.
"We want to drive continuous improvement in eating quality," Mr Maclennan said.
Alliance Group primary production manager Bruce Caughey was hopeful more livestock would be available to process soon.
"Stock availability is the main concern we have so we are hoping in a few weeks we will be full steam ahead."
