Greenmountain Group’s rise in the beef world
For David Scarrabelotti, a business that started with selling a few bobby calves has grown to 360 staff, a huge spread of country near Kyogle, NSW, and an abattoir. See how he did it.
A Queensland meat processing family which built its business on beef knows the challenges of farming intimately – because they run cattle too.
And it’s no real surprise that Greenmountain Group managing director David Scarrabelotti took this path, describing his business as meat, cattle and real estate.
The eldest of seven children who grew up on a farm, David worked in banking, then as a stock agent, then selling beef processed in a service kill before buying his own abattoir in 2006 at Coominya, Queensland.
And while there was no room for him on the family properties which drove him to choose a different career path, in a neat synergy he now owns them as part of a massive buy up of country in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, as well as country in the New England.
Collectively, the land total comes to about 7320 hectares in northern NSW – about 4065ha in the 1500mm rainfall country near Kyogle spread across 30 farms and the balance near Armidale.
And over the country, David runs about 2000 breeding cows, a mix of Santa Gertrudis and Angus, to produce cattle which are processed in his own facility in southern Queensland, sold under the slogan of naturally bred, naturally fed.
The breeding mix is a deliberate decision to cope with the subtropical conditions and the challenges that come with that, like ticks and buffalo flies, hence the use of Santa Gertrudis, and then infusing the meat qualities of a bos taurus breed like Angus.
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