Tuna Queens: Meet the new generation of female leaders in Port Lincoln’s fishing industry
It was once the male-dominated kingdom of the “tuna barons” but now new powerbrokers have taken their share of this multimillion-dollar industry. Meet the Tuna Queens.
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Simoan Hayman, Lukina Lukin and Kylie Petherick are not the typical faces you would expect to see at the table of Port Lincoln’s multimillion-dollar tuna industry.
But the once male-dominated business – so deeply rooted in the Eyre Peninsula town that prides itself on being Australia’s seafood capital – is entering a new era.
In recent years, the industry has seen a change from the historic “tuna baron” powerbrokers to fresh blood and new ideas from the next generation looking to engage with new markets.
Add in one of the worst years in history due to tough market conditions and the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the infamous tuna industry is at a turning point.
Ms Petherick, chief financial officer of leading southern bluefin tuna company Stehr Group, says there is no time like the present to break the “boys club” stigma of the industry and put the tuna baron name to rest.
“We absolutely have to,” she says. “We are experiencing intergenerational change as well as gaining new members from the outside, and it is a positive thing.
“For so long, we have been beholden to one marketplace and we have to change that, we have to look at different opportunities.
“This industry has been able to grow due to some great people being innovative, and we need to continue that.”
A drop in sales to the tuna industry’s main market in Japan – sparked by the pandemic – has forced Port Lincoln’s fisheries to look again at the domestic market and attempt to push into China.
It is among the key focus points for Ms Petherick, along with Ms Lukin and Mrs Hayman, who all sit on the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Industry Association board.
Blaslov Fishing Group executive manager Mrs Hayman is positive things will turn around and is thankful the industry has fresh blood steering them into a positive future. “We have to be optimistic over the next 12 months and that has been a big difference, having a group of youthful females running things,” she says.
“There are changes in the way we are looking to roll things out into the future.
“It’s 2020 and there is equal opportunity out there and we, as women, just have to be prepared to step up and take the knocks that come our way.”
Ms Lukin, the owner of Dinko’s Tuna, says innovation is key to the Port Lincoln industry bouncing back from a tough 2020.
“We want to be able to use 100 per cent of the fish for human consumption or to use in the beauty industry,” she says.
“Once we increase the volume, we will be able to create other products using the fish and break into other markets.”
LUKINA LUKIN
When you think of a multimillion-dollar fishing industry, you’d probably picture a big, burly man with a beard down to his chest in a pair of waders – not a Thai woman.
Lukina Lukin is the only female owner and chief executive of a major southern bluefin tuna company.
Although now regarded as one of the brightest and most innovative leaders in the $150m industry, it hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows for Ms Lukin.
In Port Lincoln on a teaching exchange in 1997, Ms Lukin met her husband, Dinko, who at the time was one of the millionaire giants of the southern bluefin industry.
From that moment, Ms Lukin began to absorb as much knowledge of the business as she could.
“I learnt a lot from him (Dinko),” she says.
“He would always tell me, ‘When there is problem you must fix it because when you do another one comes along’.”
Mr Lukin passed away in 2011, leaving his wife the business to run as best as she could.
Although Dinko’s Tuna had the smallest southern bluefin tuna quota of all the local companies, Ms Lukin has established herself as not only a powerhouse in Port Lincoln but also around the world.
Other tuna giants approached her about selling the company but she refused their overtures.
“From the start, I got offered to sell the business,” Ms Lukin says.
“But I wanted to try and I wanted for people to see me as one of them and that I won’t run away from this.”
With the support of other women in the industry, Ms Lukin believes that anyone can make a difference in any industry if you just give it a go.
“When I started on the board of the tuna association, I was the only woman,” Ms Lukin says.
“Now, we have female scientists, Simoan from Blaslov and Kylie from Stehr Group, which is good because it provides a different view and brings different ideas on things.”
SIMOAN HAYMAN
It’s not everyday the opportunity to take get a seat at the table of a multimillion-dollar fishing industry comes around.
But when the opportunity arose for Simoan Hayman, pictured below with brother Clinton Scharfe, she knew it was time.
Originally established in 1980 by Anton and Grozdana Blaslov, Blaslov Fishing Group began with a family-orientated goal.
It’s has been passed on through each generation since, and is something Mrs Hayman says she holds close to her heart.
“My grandfather always highlighted the importance of family to us. We had a lot of family lunches every Sunday at my grandparents,” Mrs Hayman says.
“He had a strong legacy where he wanted to see the business keep running as a family business, not be broken up into ‘one family takes this, one family takes that’.
“We are trying to carry on that legacy and running it as a group.”
Mrs Hayman took over as Blaslov’s executive manager in July 2019 but says she originally never saw herself being involved in the family business, despite always being around the industry growing up.
“If you were to ask me 10 years ago if I would be managing Blaslov Fishing I would have said no way, and it’s possible my family would have said the same,” she says.
“For the first part of the last year at least, it’s definitely been an adjustment, being a female and having your voice heard, but everyone’s responded really kindly.
“There is a lot of respect, which I am shocked with.”
Like many country kids, Mrs Hayman relocated to Adelaide to pursue a commerce degree while also working for the family’s accounting firm.
But it was the numbers which brought her back to Port Lincoln to run the Blaslov office and do the internal accounting, before the move to executive manager.
With her day-to-day duties consisting of overseeing staff at the company’s sardine, tuna and prawn fisheries and the Boston Marine slipway, as well as running the office crew and doing the accounting, Mrs Hayman could be one of the busiest people in the industry.
“Every day is something new and busy, that’s for sure,” Mrs Hayman says. “My kids refer me to as the ghost that flies in.”
KYLIE PETHERICK
Growing up in Cleve, Kylie Petherick never saw herself controlling the finances of one of Port Lincoln’s top tuna fisheries.
Now she is the chief financial officer of Stehr Group, overseeing accounting, frozen fish sales and harvest numbers.
After leaving school, Ms Petherick, pictured right with Ocean Family president Mr Bo, became a dental nurse but quickly decided sales marketing and finance was where she needed to be.
After two decades at spotlight company Lightforce Australia, mainly as finance director, Ms Petherick admits she had achieved all she could in her role and was looking for a change of scenery.
“I had options of heading to Port Lincoln or to Adelaide but the position of financial controller at Tony’s Tuna came up, and I applied and that was it,” she says.
In 2006, Ms Petherick began working for Tony’s Tuna, owned by tuna legend Tony Santic, where she remained for the next seven years.
Deciding that she needed a change of scenery in 2013, Ms Petherick decided to move to Adelaide with her daughters.
“I had no intention of coming back,” she says.
But in 2018, Stehr Group contacted Ms Petherick to see if she was interested in returning to the seafood capital of Australia due to their chief financial officer leaving after many years.
“Initially, my thought was no,” Ms Petherick says. “But long story short, I came back and started in April 2018.”
Now, with nearly two decades of experience in the industry, Ms Petherick says that the inclusion of female voices has been inspiring, after recently becoming secretary of the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Industry Association.
“When I started in 2006 there were almost no females,” Ms Petherick says.
“Lukina was involved a little bit, but I was just a girl in the office.
“I went to a few meetings at an industry level but that was really the extent of it.
“Coming back the second time around, it’s been really refreshing – Lukina, Simoan and I sit on the ASBTIA board as executives and we all work together on projects where it’s 50 per cent female.
“For so long, females have just been categorised into these administrative roles but now we are seeing that shift, some want to be plumbers or electricians, we have even had female cooks out on the boats.
“To any young girls out there who think that the fishing industry is for them, if you are really passionate about it, go for it.”
Originally published as Tuna Queens: Meet the new generation of female leaders in Port Lincoln’s fishing industry
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