Adept has recently made it's billionth piece of a small but vital component of the international meat industry. The company saw it's billionth 'Adept clip' roll off the production line. Used widely in meat plants throughout the world, the device reduces or eliminates contamination during meat processing.
Adept produces more than 110 million clips annually, of which 28 million are used in the united states cattle market. Director Murray Fenton said the company had had to order another moulding machine, double tooling, and keep the factory running 24 hours, seven days a week in order to cope. The beginnings of the meat clip came entirely by chance.
"We made our first prototypes in a response to a phone call from a slaughter board supervisor at a local lamb processing plant who wanted us to look at how to stop the ingested stomach contents being spilled during processing. It took us two years to get something that worked and we had a high failure rate - at times I wished we hadn't even started."
The clips have been in production since 1977, but took off in the 1990's when refinement made it more user friendly. Australia became the first export market and the clip became crucial for the New Zealand and Austrlian meat industries' battle with strict EU and US export regulations.
Six attempts have been made to copy the the clip but only one had been successful.