Brothers’ Piñata Farms business plan ripe for the picking

HORTICULTURE WINNER 2018: THEY’RE figures that are hard enough to wrap your head around — let alone your lips.

Brothers in arms: Gavin Scurr runs a mixed operation growing mangoes, pineapples and strawberries with his brother Stephen.

THEY’RE figures that are hard enough to wrap your head around — let alone your lips.

But nine million pineapples, 130 million strawberries and 13 million mangoes make up a proven business recipe for Piñata Farms that is well and truly passing the consumer taste test.

Run by brothers Gavin and Stephen Scurr and their families, Piñata has grown from humble beginnings to become a major player in the Australian fresh fruit market with 1010 hectares of fruit under production in seven locations across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania.

It supplies Australia’s three biggest supermarkets — Coles, Woolworths and Aldi — year round, turns over more than $50 million a year and employs 70 full-time staff and 300 seasonal workers.

It’s a far cry from 1961 when Gavin and Stephen’s builder grandfather purchased a small farm at Wamuran, just west of Caboolture on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, on which he began growing pineapples.

The brothers joined their father, Geoff, in the farming trade in the 1980s and while they diversified into other crops such as potato, pumpkin, watermelon and zucchini, when they “couldn’t really find a point of difference” with them they decided to concentrate solely on pineapples.

They moved into growing strawberries in 2000 and in 2002 purchased the honey gold mango variety.

The bulk of production is now spread across farms at Wamuran, Stanthorpe, and Mareeba in Queensland, and Humpty Doo, Katherine and Mataranka in the Northern Territory.

In a sign of its commitment to the industry, Piñata operates a mango breeding program in South Africa and has teamed with Queensland’s agriculture department to run a pineapple breeding program.

It has also joined forces with international partners to bring the world’s best fruit varieties to Australian consumers and has undertaken a significant expansion project. Last year it purchased a sheep farm in Tasmania which it is converting to grow raspberries and strawberries.

“We see ourselves becoming a significant player in the production of raspberries within five years,” says Gavin, 50.

It is this dedication and foresight that makes Piñata Farms a deserving winner of The Weekly Times Coles 2018 Horticulture Farmer of the Year.

WINNER Horticulture Farmer of the Year 2018

PINATA FARMS, the Scurr family, Wamuran, Qld

ON FARM: THE SCURR FAMILY