Costa boss Harry Debney on his 10 years at the top

Costa Group boss Harry Debney shares his secrets to helping create one of the world’s biggest horticultural companies ahead of his impending retirement this year.

Moving on: Costa Group chief executive Harry Debeney (right), with Costa Group founder Frank Costa.

OUTGOING Costa Group boss Harry Debney says a focus on building the company’s export potential has helped create a global horticultural empire during his 10 years at the helm.

Mr Debney revealed to The Weekly Times, following his announcement of plans to leave the company after a decade as its chief executive, the secrets to the Costa Group’s growth from private ownership with fledging new ventures in China and Morocco to an ASX-listed $1.12 billion enterprise.

While the company has a strong domestic focus, Mr Debney said there were many attractive offshore markets eager for Australian fresh produce.

“We think Japan is a very strong market. We export three-quarters of our citrus crop, and 40 per cent goes to Japan,” he said. “It takes a long time to get in, but when you do it’s a very secure market. We are currently working on securing access for blueberries.”

“South Korea is a big market now where there are plenty of opportunities, and our second biggest citrus export destination is the US. We’re counter seasonal so we supply afourer mandarins into their market from August to November,” Mr Debney said.

The 72-year-old, who joined Costa in 2010 from the Visy Group, will leave the company before the end of the year to pursue other commercial interests and scale back from a six-day working week. He is a non-executive director at Kogan and chairman of agtech company The Yield.

Mr Debney said other pillars of Costa’s business model were category and geographical diversity, rapid adoption of new technology, varietal development and year-round supply.

“Technology is what it’s all about, particularly in horticulture, where our biggest cost is labour. We have to continually work on high yield and more automation,” he said.

The company has now been in China for five years and Morocco for 11. Its footprint in China continues to grow in Yunnan Province, with planting of a new 62ha site at Guangmen completed in April and another 50ha to be planted at a new site at Pupiao within the next 12 months.

Costa is the only Australian company with year-long production of blueberries and raspberries. Challenging and motivating staff was instrumental in achieving this, Mr Debney said.

“If we go back nine years ago, blueberries were all grown in soil and took three to four years to get a good crop. We experimented growing them in substrate. Everyone thought we were a bit crazy, but we found we got a big crop in 12 months. We basically revolutionised the industry. The people who did that were technologists and agronomists,” Mr Debney said. “We went into unknown territory. My job is to encourage that and provide seed capital, and now all our blueberries are grown like that.”

Costa has invested heavily in protected cropping and weather mitigation.

“If you keep doing what you’re doing today, you won’t be in business in 10 years, he said.

Mr Debney said the company was due for executive renewal. “I’ve been CEO for 10 years now and we’ve been through major transformation, basically building the largest horticultural company in the world. It’s time for new direction, and it’s probably time at my age to move on to other things,” he said.

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