Flowerdale Farm sprouts

RESILIENCE and hard work can fend off all challengers.

Rattray

RESILIENCE and hard work can fend off all challengers.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then James Rattray and his parents should be well-chuffed.

Since the Rattrays started Flowerdale Farm in 1983 - the first in Victoria to grow alfalfa sprouts - their business model has been imitated countless times.

The problem, of course, is that imitation doesn't make a successful business, but rather undermines it, and the Rattrays have come close to the brink several times in three decades of farming.

"Farming and the fresh food industry is a tough gig," said James, 33, who now runs Flowerdale Farm's agency at the Melbourne Wholesale Market.

"You've got to be full of optimism and luckily my parents have always been very resilient people."

That resilience has now paid off and with Catherine and Charles Rattray running the 120ha farm in central Victoria and James managing the wholesale business, the family have become market leaders.

"Our persistence in Victoria means we are all that is left. No one competes with us here. We have out-competed all the other (sprout) farms," James said.

"We have been very good at growing the business and filling the market requirements, getting the product and prices right and developing the agency."

James said the key to their 30-year resilience was not just farming savviness and hard work, but sound systems created from the outset, as well as an ability to adapt and transform.

The Rattrays moved to Flowerdale in 1980 where the "hippy"-minded Catherine began growing alfalfas in jars and bath tubs, soon selling to customers around central Victoria and Melbourne from the couple's Kombi van.

"Mum and Dad were the first people to grow them commercially in Australia," James said. "Within a few years they were supplying Coles, Safeway and Qantas, as well as exporting. They got pretty big, employing 10 people in the 80s."

But then word spread and other farms cottoned onto the sprouting business.

"They went from the only grower in Australia and five years later there were about 100," he said.

"It just took off, because it was an easy business to get into, there were no barriers to entry," James said.

"The price fell. It went from 80c a punnet at the start of the 80s to less than 50c at the end of the decade.

"They faced the same problem as all growers - no market power. Someone comes in, copies them and slashes prices to compete."

Rather than opt out of the farm, the downward spiral saw that Rattray resilience kick in.

They restructured, stopped growing alfalfas for a time and instead in the mid-90s put their energies into snow pea shoots.

"They spent 10 years paying off debt and treading water on the back of snow peas," James said.

In the late 1990s Charles and Catherine opted for a new system to protect themselves against competitors slashing their prices, which is the mainstay of their business today.

They opened a wholesale agency at the Melbourne Wholesale Market, avoiding the precariousness of selling shop-to-shop, and cutting out the middle man.

"It turned out to be a fortuitous decision because the business went along in leaps and bounds," James said.

"Dad worked all night at the market and then by day at the farm. They were hard years."

To reduce the work load, Charles employed a market manager.

Later James came on to run the market side of the business and the family worked harder than ever, contacting all their loyal customers.

This was followed by another great leap.

Now not only does the family sell their own alfalfa and other sprouts from the Melbourne Wholesale Market - and in September began supplying Coles - but they have taken on a range of growers and products to create a specialist one-stop-shop for anyone wanting to buy microgreens, petite vegetables, edible flowers, salad greens, herbs, shoots and sprouts.

In total their market agency has about 150 products from growers around Australia, about seven of which supply only to Flowerdale Farm.

"We were the first growers to have our own agency and we were the first to be a specialist wholesaler, focusing on a niche area," James said.

But not all the Rattray savviness and transformations have been at the wholesale market. On their 120ha Flowerdale property, which has 75 Angus cattle, Charles and Catherine have also instigated processes that have seen them become leaders in their field.

Normally, alfalfa sprouts are grown hydroponically on paper.

But Charles designed a system that grows with water only.

Flowerdale Farm's alfalfa uses 100 tonnes of dry seed grown in stainless steel, insulated rooms that have no sunlight but ultra-violet lights, watered by a fine mist from fog sprays. Using no paper means the sprouts' roots form a mat, becoming their own growing medium.

"The yield is greatly higher, about 60 per cent better, with a fraction of the labour required. Best of all it produces a consistent product and that's what customers want," James said.

Sprouts are harvested every day, seven days a week.

Aside from alfalfa, Flowerdale Farm also produces seeds of snow peas (15 tonnes per week), popcorn shoots (about 5 tonnes) and lentils (10 tonnes).

James said his parents could grow their business further, but at this stage it was a lifestyle decision to reduce their work load.

As for James' role, he envisages taking Flowerdale Farm's model to other states and eventually to South East Asia.

And as for the threat of imitators or competitors, James said he harnesses his energies where they're most needed.

"It is a constant problem. I don't think you can worry about it." he said.

"People copy us. We don't copy anyone. We focus on innovating, developing and keeping focused on what we want to achieve."