World's largest poultry processing facility coming to South Korea

South Korean chicken processing company Harim Co is modernising its Iksan plant. The company processes nearly 120 million chickens annually, supplied by 600 nearby poultry farms, and employs 1900 workers across multiple plants in Iksan and Jeongeup.

The plant upgrade

With two existing lines being overhauled and re-used and four new high-speed Marel Poultry lines being installed, the plant will be one of the largest poultry processing facilities in Asia. When the proposed seventh line is added it will be the largest facility in the world.

Marel’s four new processing lines will be spread over five different floors in the fully modernised Iksan plant.

The new poultry lines will make use of Marel’s latest technologies in scalding, defeathering, evisceration and chilling. The Stork Nuova, claimed to be the world’s most efficient eviscerator with integrated giblet harvesting line, will be at the heart of the evisceration department. All four lines will include low-maintenance, self-calibrating, high-speed SmartWeighers.

This is one tall plant

With land suitable for buildings at a premium in Korea, Harim has elected to construct a five-storey building, attached to the existing plant, extending its existing 80,000 m² production area to 150,000 m². Spacious air chill tunnels, which use Stork DownFlow ‘Plus’ technology, will be positioned on the top floor.

An overhead conveyor system will distribute broilers to all departments, keeping all processes completely inline. The system features ATC (Automatic Tension Control) technology, which makes for increased reliability as well as reduced wear and tear. In Harim's Iksan plant, ATC allows a spectacular height difference of more than 20 metres to be bridged.

Innova food processing software will ensure the overall monitoring of all equipment installed in the Marel Poultry lines at Harim.

Because of the size of the plant, preventive maintenance is an important issue to protect the four lines from unnecessary downtime. During the first years, Marel Poultry’s field service engineers will pay regular visits to the Iksan plant, a wish clearly expressed by the Harim Group.

Guests entering the plant will have an impressive experience. After an introduction movie about Harim in the company cinema, the film screen will lift to give access to the Harim museum and information centre. A 500 m-long visitors’ corridor will show the production process and provide a complete overview of the poultry processing lines.