This Energy Consumption Guide (ECG) is intended to raise awareness of the potential to improve the energy and environmental performance of small to medium sized red meat processing facilities , and to encourage positive management action. It describes four types of facilities which can form the basis for characterization and comparison against other similar facilities throughout the Australian Red Meat Processing Industry. It also outlines technical and management measures to identify and quantify energy saving opportunities.

The ECG was developed by Energetics Pty Ltd on behalf of the Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC) under the program entitled ‘Domestic Processors Energy Efficiency Program (DPEEP)’, a program developed by AMPC to assist small to medium sized domestic processors in understanding and managing energy cost and use. The dataset used to develop the benchmarks was gathered from five sites in NSW.