Roper & Son Limited Case Study

Roper & Son Limited is a comprehensive produce business specialising in growing, harvesting, and packing vegetables, as well as peeling red onions for supermarkets nationwide. In addition, they pack for other growers, handling multiple products like onions, pumpkin, squash, and beetroot. With around 20 staff, their operations play a vital role in the supply chain.

While Roper & Son Limited runs a dynamic farming operation, their standout feature is their packhouse, which peels red onions for nearly the entire country. The company also provides packing services for other red onion growers, paying them based on their packet rate.

The challenges began when the company’s workforce and client list grew.

“We were looking at traceability and to monitor staff performance—crucially, for safety and recall purposes for the supermarkets and consumers.

“Our existing manual, paper-based system needed to be more efficient. We met the Dataphyll team at a field days event, which was the start of the working relationship.

Roper & Son found Dataphyll’s base product promising, but it wasn’t a perfect fit for their unique workflow. Instead of forcing Roper & Son to adapt, Dataphyll modified its product to cater to Roper’s processes.

“They managed to change how the product works a wee bit to suit our process.”

Dataphyll’s system offered a solution to several challenges:

• Ensured seamless tracking and traceability for the products going through the packhouse.
• Offered a reliable method to gauge and remunerate staff performance.
• Allowed efficient monitoring of packing rates without the need for paper.

The Dataphyll system introduced more than just operational efficiency. The system-initiated competition among staff, pushing slower workers to improve. It also provided a system resilient against shifts and changes in the workforce. Dataphyll’s quality control capabilities allow precise quality tracking based on who packed the produce.