Turi Foods – owner of the long-established La Ionica brand – is one of Australia’s three largest poultry producers. With operations in Victoria and New South Wales, it delivers premium-quality chicken to Australia’s largest supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths, and to major fast-food chains such as KFC, Nando’s and Red Rooster.
In July 2009, Turi Foods acquired the Victorian operations of competitor Steggles. Renamed Golden Farms, this Geelong facility processes and packages approximately 400,000 chickens per week. The company that provided Golden Farms’ Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system gave it three months to either purchase a new licence as a single site user or stop using the system. A new licence would have been prohibitive, since the ERP system was designed for multi-facility operations.
With little time to examine its options, Golden Farms turned to ERP specialist and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Fenwick Software. Fenwick said it could deploy Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 within three months, including electronic data interfaces (EDIs) to major customers and a bespoke call centre tool. Golden Farms agreed, and in late October the new ERP went live. Staff now have a system that is easier to maintain than its predecessor, and which generates reports more quickly.
