Looking back on a life's work

John Dee director Bob Hart recalls seven decades of advancement with the firm

LIFE'S WORK: Bob Hart, 92, looks back on 70 years of progress at Warwick's John Dee - Australia's oldest single-family owned meat processor. Picture: Sophie Lester

FOR 70 years, Bob Hart has been at the helm of the region's largest employer - John Dee.

Now, at 92, the company director will take a step back from the job after decades of growing the Rose City meat processing business.

The typically private businessman looks back on his time at the company as he looks to hand over John Dee to the next generation.

When he first heard his family had acquired the facility, Mr Hart, a New South Welshman, had to ask where the town even was before joining his brother Frank, eight years his senior, in the Rose City.

Frank had come to Warwick in 1945, two years prior to Mr Hart's arrival at the age of 22.

"Warwick was very different back then - I came up from Brisbane via the Heifer Creek Rd, which took four hours and was 50% dirt track, while The Gap road was just a very thin strip of bitumen," Mr Hart said.

"The town had been used as a military hub and the plant had been used as a cold store during the war so my brother spent the first couple of years just getting the infrastructure back up and running."

Born and raised in Sydney, Mr Hart served in the navy during the Second World War.

After leaving the military he joined his older brother in Warwick, while his brother Barry ran the butcher shops and later the export sales in Brisbane.

"I had gone straight from school into the navy so I had no formal training," Mr Hart said.

"Frank was the engineer and I was the bookkeeper and wages clerk but we did a lot of other things ourselves; like Frank drove a truck of beef to Brisbane every night for four months when there was a beef strike.

"We had our own power generator that switched off at 5pm every day so after that time I would continue the bookkeeping by the light of a Hurricane (kerosene) lamp.

"The pay each week for about 10 employees and Frank and myself was about £100 or $200."

Mr Hart never married but emphasised the importance of having family involved in the business.

His nephews John and Frank Jr joined the business in the 60s and 70s.

John Dee now boasts four generations of experience as the oldest single family-owned meat processor in Australia and has about 600 employees.

"The family has been the business and the business has been the family," Mr Hart said.

"We've seen a lot of big family names likes Anderson's and Morex disappear from the industry as a lot of plants have shut down.

"We never would have made a go of it if it hadn't been for the involvement of the family."

When the Harts first came to Warwick, John Dee workers would process about 40 head of lighter cattle every second day for export solely to the UK.

The plant now processes 550 heavy beef carcasses every day, a growth from 10 tonnes to 200 tonnes of beef over the company's seven-decade history.

In 1963, Mr Hart went on a tour through Bangkok, Taipei and Jakarta with Tim Swan from Qantas to look at flying product into those markets. Over the years, the company has added on larger slaughter floors, blast tunnels, freezer and cold rooms to build the Rosehill Rd factory to where it is today.

John Dee now exports high-quality chilled beef into export markets in South-East Asia and Europe, and Mr Hart said the expansion to the company would not have been possible without significant technological advancement.

"I've seen all sorts of changes with the company and we've taken full advantage of technology," he said.

"When I first started I was doing all the bookkeeping by hand, and we had a counting machine before the first calculators came in in the 70s; there was no phone at our house, and at the plant it could take hours to get connected to an interstate call.

"We had the first saw to produce t-bone steaks for American military stationed in Brisbane because no one had really heard of them here before, and we built the first down-pulling hide puller and people came from all over to see it.

"T-bones are now a product we export and the hide puller is pretty universal in processing."

This month, the first robot will be installed to palletise cartons of chilled beef, which Mr Hart said would aid further expansion.

While he has remained a dedicated worker, he said he would be stepping back slightly from the business, but insisted he was not retiring.

"I'm still very interested in what the future holds for the company, but I'm leaving it in good hands with John, and Warren Stiff," he said.

"I'll be keeping an eye on things."