How do you view the current market for automation?

There is no better time than now to look at introducing technology to automate manufacturing processes. The international marketplace demands our customers be world leading in their operations and offerings, while also tackling the challenge of accessing labour.

Covid has only exacerbated the labour shortage – and automation is an excellent solution to overcome this.

What is your take on the industry in New Zealand at present? Is it an exciting space to be working in?

New Zealand has always been a global leader in innovation, particularly as it relates to the food industry.

However, the sector is fragmented with many small to mid-sized companies that do not have the scale or access to capital to take their technology to the world.

MHM Automation has been consolidating a number of these businesses with a focus on building scale and diversification.

We see it as an exciting place to be in – the drivers of automation in the food sector are many, from food safety, worker health and safety, food quality and keeping costs low.

We see the drivers of automation improving and are excited about helping our customers future-proof their businesses.

Briefly introduce me to MHM Automation

MHM Automation is a leader in the design and supply of automated solutions to the food sector globally.

We are headquartered out of Christchurch (NZ), and also have facilities in Hastings, Auckland, Brisbane and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

MHM’s core business is working with the leading meat and dairy processors in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  Our client base spans most of the major producers in these markets.

MHM has three key product offerings:

Chilling and freezing:  Our Milmeq product range is a world leader in the chilling and freezing of meat and cheese. We have over 100 of our systems installed globally in many of the leading meat and dairy producers.

Our key technologies are plate freezers and chilling and freezing tunnels and chilling tunnels.

Materials handling: Our H&C product range are leaders in many specialist areas of automation. We primarily design and deliver robotic and mechanical systems across a broad range of applications.

We are world leaders in reverse packaging (notably deboxing and debagging of bulk cheese), and also provide our customers with systems to depalletise/palletise, convey, and pack.

We also supply handling high speed handling and processing systems for grain and timber

Fabrication: MHM provides a range of tanks, pressure vessels, boilers and materials handling equipment for the dairy, food, timber and agriculture sectors via our Mercer and SCE brands.

We also represent a range of brands for the timber processing sector in Australia and New Zealand.

What differentiates MHM Automation from the competition?

At MHM Automation we focus on deep relationships with our customers. Given the broad range of systems, products and services that we now provide across the Milmeq, H&C, Mercer and SCE brands, we can offer our customers world leading solutions across their facilities.

We are usually working on existing sites, with the ability to design and deliver a bespoke solution to both achieve the desired outcome, but also fit into the space.

In addition to this, innovation is at the heart of what we do. Our products tend to have a reputation for quality and are at the top of their specific market niche. This is really important to us as we do not see ourselves as a commodity supplier.

The focus is on providing world leading solutions.

What are some projects you have completed or are working on?

Rockit is a New Zealand company that exports snack sized apple in handy clear tubes for on-the-go consumption.  We have worked with Rockit to develop a bespoke robotic tube filling machine that can pack 100 apples per minute.

An integrated vision system allows the robots to identify the height of each apple and carefully select the right sized apples to perfectly fill each tube.

Cheese Merchants of America specialises in cheese conversion. Their mission is to convert the highest quality bulk cheeses into products ready for the food service, industrial/manufacturing and retail industries.

This includes grating, shredding and shaving of hard cheese and the production of dehydrated cheese products.

MHM has worked in partnership with Cheese Merchants to automation automate the front end of their process of depalletising, deboxing and debagging, integrating robots with vision systems.

Midfield Meats is a major player in the Australian meat market.  MHM is currently engaged to automate their process from boning room to palletising.

The system includes the world’s largest horizontal plate freezers, automated storage and retrieval of chilled and frozen cartons, and robotic palletising.

We installed the plate freezer in 2021 with the balance to be completed in 2022.

This project is exciting for us as it showcases all that we stand for – a deep customer relationship, and the delivery of an end-to-end solution for our customer, by integrating several of our world-leading technologies.

Are there any new products or emerging technologies you would like to mention?

We are excited about the potential of collaborative robots (cobots) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that can add more automation options to manufacturing processes.

The advantage of these two technologies is their ability to work alongside people without the need for safety fencing or guarding. 

Whilst not new, these technologies have now matured to the point of being reliable in manufacturing operations and are cost effective.

We are partnering with global leaders in both the cobot and AMR space and are really excited about being able to offer these exciting technologies as part of our solutions.

Could you also talk about the company’s supply chain operations?

We are an internationally focussed company with supply chains that reflect this. We work in partnership with a number of suppliers that act as an extension to our supply chain, whether they be contract manufacturing, supply key equipment or longstanding contractors to support our installations.

We could not have a successful business without these key players, with relationships that have been build built on decades of trust and performance.

Would you say the same about your staff? How do you try to empower them and recognise the contributions that they make?

Whilst we are a technology led business, our success comes down to our team. This spans from their longstanding relationships with customers and suppliers, innovative engineering to keep our products world leading, to their dedication to execute projects on time, in budget and meeting customer expectations.

In the last two years in particular our teams have gone above and beyond to manage a highly dynamic supply chain whilst still meeting our promises to customers in a highly uncertain Covid environment.

One of our values is ‘we are in this together’. This is really important to us as it says that no one person is more important than any other across the MHM group.

Delivery for our customers and ultimately success as a group comes from having an aligned team that understand and respect every team member’s role.

Looking ahead, what are your key priorities for the coming year?

We have a really strong order book right now. So the first priority, as always, is delivery of that order book for our customers.

That is challenging in the current environment with disrupted supply chains and a resource shortage.

At the same time, we are always looking for opportunities to grow and diversify. Last year we launched an ambitious plan to nearly double the size of our business over the next three years.

This will be achieved through new product development, the expansion into new markets and through further acquisitions.

In the end, you only survive in our game if you can continue to provide customers with world leading solutions that help improve their business.

Technology continues to evolve rapidly and the challenge for us is to stay ahead of the competition by designing and supplying innovative, reliable and cost-effective solutions.

That will also be our focus.