Beef producers supplying Scotland's largest red meat business are the first in the UK to benefit from a pioneering computer programme sponsored by Tesco. The innovative scheme is designed to help producers improve the physical and financial performance of their beef enterprises.

McIntosh Donald of Portlethen, part of the Grampian Country Food Group, is the first red meat plant in the UK to adopt the revolutionary computer programme which is enabling the plant's 1200 producers to benchmark the performance of their cattle against the factory average and pin-point areas where improvements can be made.

McIntosh Donald is sole supplier of Scotch beef to Tesco, financiers of this new initiative, and Scotland's largest red meat business, handling more than 16% of Scottish beef production. Throughput of the Portlethen plant last year was 81,000 beef cattle.

"The introduction of the computerised programme is a major step forward which offers real benefits to our producers throughout Scotland," said McIntosh Donald managing director, Ralph Green.

"Improving efficiency by reducing costs of production and maximising returns by meeting the required carcase specification are even more vital for producers now that they are operating in an unsubsidised market."

"We are delighted to be backing this pioneering initiative with real benefits for the Scottish meat industry," said Michelle Waterman, agricultural manager at Tesco.

"The computer programme for the first time allows producers to compare the performance of their cattle against other producers on a confidential basis, identifying a range of traits, including carcase weight, conformation, fatness, age, value, carcase gain, liveweight gain and percentage of cattle with fluke."

Performance information is broken down in to league tables for steers, heifers and young bulls and is also analysed on a breed basis. Producers can work out a simple profit margin if they know their feeding costs per day.

"This information simply hasn't been available previously but can now be accessed on-line from the Monday following week of slaughter, giving producers an early opportunity to take action if weaknesses are highlighted," said Mr Green.

"McIntosh Donald has always been conscious of the need to keep producers well informed and was the first to provide carcase gain information and the first to monitor the incidence of liver fluke. The Tesco-backed computer programme is a further huge leap forward."

Mr Green said he hoped the programme would narrow the gap between the performance of the top third producers and the average.

"We want to see our producers achieving optimum efficiency to safeguard our supplies of quality cattle for the long-term," he said.

* Grampian Country Food Group is the UK's leading independent food manufacturer producing a wide range of chicken, pork, beef, lamb and turkey products. Established in 1980 at Banff in the North East of Scotland, the business has followed an acquisition strategy and now operates at 45 sites throughout the UK, Portugal, the Netherlands and Thailand employing 25,000 colleagues.