Gold Coast Frontier Pets makes $4.8m from free range food

A Gold Coast woman set out to tackle a “devastating” problem and pet loving Australians are also being rewarded.

Di Scott has been on a mission to end factory farming for years and only eats free range but one day when she decided to peek at the label on her dog’s food she was shocked by what she uncovered.

She said the dog food was full of “crap” and she knew she couldn’t continue to dish it up to them.

The former marketing manager reached out to an animal nutritionist to find a product for her beloved dogs – only to discover she would have to make it herself.

“The nutritionist gave me a recipe and I started to make the food myself but it was taking my whole Sunday and all of my free time, with portion control and cutting up fruit and vegetables and meat,” she told news.com.au.

“I went back to the animal nutritionist and said there has to be a commercial product that is easier and has ethical ingredients and she said there wasn’t one. So I said right we are going to make one.

“I wanted to feed my dogs appropriate food for them and not just crap, I wanted to support the ethical farming community and I didn’t want to have to hand prepare the food.”

RELATED: Mum gambles house deposit to make $3.5m

The 59-year-old thought launching the business would take just three months and cost $50,000, but she ended up forking out millions. Picture: Supplied

The dog mum, who has two English bull terriers, believed that starting her own business five years ago, called Frontier Pets, would be “fairly easy” – she would just need to reach out to some free range farmers and use a freeze drying process to make the food.

“When I started the journey, I said I would be able to knock it over in three months and it would probably cost $50,000, but of course it cost millions,” she explained. “A freeze dryer itself costs $1 million.”

‘Devastating industry’

But she was determined to do her part to change the world. She said people think factory farming is an “overseas problem” when there are 500 million animals impacted in Australia.

“Even a conscious buyer of free range food for themselves may not have not made the mental leap to understand that offcuts and byproducts of industrialised meat are going into animal products,” she said.

“We spend as a country nearly $4 billion on food for our pets and that’s a lot of meat, so inadvertently even conscious buyers, who are environmentally and sustainably aware, are still potentially feeding pets a product that supports this devastating industry and not because they are cruel, it’s just they don’t know.”

A “big road trip” fully kicked off the business, which she started in the spare room of her Gold Coast home, where she visited all the free range farmers along the east coast of Australia, including beef, chicken, pork, eggs, fruit and vegetable farms.

In the first year, she made $100,000 but since then profits have soared. This financial year she is set to make an estimated $4.8 million with her free range pet food.

RELATED: Aussie makes $1.5m with ‘cheeky’ treat

The dog food is freeze dried and owners add the water back in when feeding their pets. Picture: Little Whispers Photography

She said the business seemed to have “touched a nerve” for people, particularly as pets become more important in Aussie’s lives.

“Our dogs, their role in our life, has changed substantially. Dogs have gone from the backyard to the bedroom,” she noted.

“My dogs sleep on our bed much to my husband’s disgust, but people’s relationships with pets is very different to what they used to have before. I think people are more concerned about the wellbeing of their pets as they consider them to be a family member.

“But years of feeding very heavily processed food has created a lot more diseases and health. issues than were around 50 years ago. When we were feeding our dogs scraps from the table they were actually getting a better meal than from today’s heavily processed kibble diet.”

Changing pet’s health

Around 7000kgs of dog food is sold a month by Frontier Pets and Ms Scott expects this to double by the end of the year.

The business uses a special freeze dried process, where the water is extracted from the meal.

“Our product is like cordial, it will cost you about $50 a kg but one kilo of our dried product reconstituted goes to 4kg, so it works out to be about $12 a kilo, which is the same as a premium kibble but much better,” she explained.

“When the customer gets the dry product, they don’t have to refrigerate it and when feeding their pet they just have to add water back.”

Currently chicken, beef and pork are available for dogs, but there is a new cat range coming soon. Picture: Supplied

Ms Scott said she has had thousands of customers reach out to share the change in their pet’s health since eating her products.

“As a result of eating food that is full of carbohydrates and heavily processed, animals are developing itching or digestive issues or physical issues as commercial dry food can have anything up to 80 per cent carbohydrates and ours has less than 2 per cent,” she said.

“We have thousands of customers who are all telling us the same thing – that their dogs, health, energy and wellbeing is better and their eyes are brighter and they are in much better condition.”

She added that one in three companion animals will get cancer in some form and that’s predominantly put down to diet.

Next up Frontier Pets is moving into cat food, which Ms Scott said should become available in a couple of months.

Customers have reached out to talk about the improvement in their dog's health since eating Frontier Pets food. Picture: Supplied

Older activism

The 59-year-old said she started her business journey later in life but she wanted to show that being environmentally and socially aware wasn’t just for the younger generations.

She added that factory farming was not only cruel, with animals crammed into cages, but was also destroying the planet.

“Factory farms are supported by clearing massive spaces of land and growing grains to feed the animals and it’s creating an environmental disaster, so there a lot of reasons why we shouldn’t be supporting factory farming,” she said.

“We actually talk to people about how your dog can change the world and that’s what’s happening.

“We are helping people make better choices when it comes to their pets and nutritionally the food is off the charts, it’s just so good, it’s better than we eat.”

Originally published as Gold Coast Frontier Pets makes $4.8m from free range food