A US beef processor put FloVision Nano over its bone lines to measure the meat left on every bone, in real time. Tracking residual meat across 12 bone types turned an invisible giveaway into a number worth $1.9M a year.
Every bone that leaves a boning hall carries residual meat. Recovered well, it's saleable product; recovered poorly, it's rendered as low-grade fat and trim worth a fraction of its value. At 2,200 head per day — roughly 96,800 bones a month across two sides — small differences in how cleanly each bone is worked add up fast. But without measurement, that loss is invisible: no one can price what no one counts.
The processor put FloVision Nano over its bone lines to measure the percentage of meat remaining on every bone, by bone type, in real time. Across 12 bone types — brisket, femur, butt, arm, plate, scapula and more — the system tracked residual-meat percentage week over week, benchmarking each bone against its own best-observed performance.
That turned a vague sense of “we could recover more” into a specific, priced opportunity for each bone type — and showed exactly where a shift was drifting.
Comparing two full operating months, improved recovery across the 12 bone types was worth $158,638 per month — about $1.9M annualized. The brisket bone was the biggest mover on its own: a 1.5-percentage-point improvement in residual meat recovered, worth $42,635 a month, or over $511,000 a year. Only one bone type regressed, and because every bone was measured, it was caught rather than hidden.
The measurement also sized the prize still on the table: at any given time, roughly 969 tonnes of residual meat sits on bones each month — a gross value of $7.5M to $10.9M depending on how it's recovered.
You can't recover what you can't see. Measuring residual meat on every bone, every shift, turned bone yield from a guess into a line on the P&L.
Book 30 minutes and we'll map one line and walk you through exactly what we'd find on your floor. Most processors see payback in about three months — bring your current yield numbers and we'll show you where the giveaway is.