Fleurieu Milk Co owes success to passion for dairy
A dairy company established by a handful of South Australian farming families is on a growth curve.
TWO years ago Fleurieu Milk Co had 15 staff. Now there are 47.
Two years ago the processing factory, owned by three dairy farmers in the South Australian town of Myponga, doubled its cold storage.
Now it has outgrown that expansion and according to general manager Nick Hutchinson needs to add more “as quick as we can”.
Nick said in the past year Fleurieu Milk Co had completed a $1.2 million upgrade, allowing them to process 4000 litres of milk an hour, faster than the previous 1800 litres an hour, in addition to a new $260,000 bottling machine.
“We have had substantial growth recently. Since April 2018 the business has grown 35 per cent,” Nick said.
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“The owners would say there’s a bit of luck involved — their timing was good — but also a lot of hard work, having a quality product and a strong brand.”
Talk to Nick, and his uncle and part owner of the business Geoff Hutchinson and the examples of success and rapid growth keep coming.
“We are not marketing gurus and not business oriented. We are dairy farmers. I still get up at 4am every day to milk,” Geoff said.
“But creating this company has allowed us to still be dairy farmers and allowed us to be passionate about farming again, which is important at a time when most dairies are battling.”
Geoff, his wife, Louise, and dairy mates Barry and Merridie Clarke and Chris and Karen Royans decided to bottle their own milk in 2006.
“It was a time when milk prices were stagnant and costs were rising and they decided to take a risk and start their own brand,” Nick said.
“In the 1970s there were about 40 dairies in Myponga, and in 2006 it was down to 12.”
BOLD MOOVE
FLEURIEU Milk Co started out as a small plant, built on the Hutchinsons’ 110ha property and initially run by the three dairy families, since then growing incrementally over the years.
“I’d say the plant is now about 20 times the footprint it was in 2006,” Nick said.
Geoff and Chris now share-farm a herd of 330 Holsteins, while Barry farms 270 Jerseys on 130ha.
Given the growth, extra supply comes from two other farms, with a third coming on in January next year.
Geoff’s production is now 2.6 million litres annually, or 9000 litres a cow per year, with cell count below 100,000 cells/ml. Fleurieu Milk’s total production is more than seven million litres a year.
About 75 per cent of production goes into pasteurised milk in two brands: Farm Fresh (the Friesian herd) or Jersey, both of which also have unhomogenised milks.
Farm Fresh butterfat is 3.8 per cent and Jersey is 4.8 per cent; while protein in Farm Fresh is 3.4 per cent and Jersey, 3.9 per cent.
More than 10 per cent of production goes into flavoured milk, which Nick said has experienced strong growth in recent years. In contrast, he said, yoghurt (they produce nine different flavours) has been a “congested market”.
“So in the past two months we’ve launched four new flavours as a point of difference, called Something Wild, using local indigenous ingredients Kakadu plum, quandong, muntrie berry and Davdison plum, which are picked in remote areas and employ indigenous workers,” Nick said.
EYES OPEN
ON the back of this, Nick said as of last month they had begun selling this new line of yoghurt, as well as milk, for the first time to Singapore; which is in addition to an established export market to Malaysia for the past three years.
With this new line, yoghurt is also now being sold into the Northern Territory.
He said the vast majority of products were sold in South Australia through independent retailers such as Foodland and IGA, with most growth in food services: restaurants and cafes, which have found it harder to source milk from larger dairy multinationals.
Nick said since 2017, Fleurieu Milk had been in charge of the entire production chain, at that time taking over distribution and sales.
“Not many do that in the dairy industry, but it has given us complete control over our product and quality. This in part explains how we also have grown from 15 employees to 47,” he said.
Geoff said because supply and demand ebbed and flowed through the year, Fleurieu Milk had, since 2006, sold excess supply, or sought to top up their own supplies with Warrnambool Cheese and Butter.
“When we first started initially 10 per cent went through our company and 90 per cent to Warrnambool, which meant we still had some income coming in,” Geoff said. “To make a success of this you need a processor on board. Most companies want 100 per cent or nothing, so we’ve been lucky.”
Geoff said their success also came from herd quality. For 30 years he has shown his Friesians at cattle shows, currently holding the mature age all-Australian cow of the year title.
Each year he uses artificial insemination and embryo transfer with embryos imported from the US and around the world.
“We always aim for the big show winners,” Geoff said.
TIGHT GENES
THIS year Geoff is launching what he believes to be a South Australian first with his Windy Vale Holsteins on-farm quarantine facility, capable of exporting his own and other dairy farmers’ herd embryos.
“We can house animals from around Australia for embryo sale overseas. We are willing to take anyone’s cow on board if they want to export,” he said.
“We have three paddocks and a cow would need to be isolated for six weeks, embryos collected and stored by an embryo technician, who also does genomic testing for type, volume, percentage, to identify top performers. It’s quite amazing.
“We have imported from around the world for years and now ours are good enough to export.”
Geoff’s herd is fed on clover and ryegrass, with paddocks renovated annually and 60ha irrigated. Cattle also receive a 9kg grain ration in the Hutchinson’s new dairy.
In the past two years they have built a new 15-aside double rapid exit herringbone dairy, 500m from the milk processing plant, costing $1.1 million, replacing their nine-aside.
“This new dairy is all about speed. I can now milk 300 faster than I could 160 in the old one,” Geoff said.
And if they ever turn their hand to tourism, the new dairy has a second storey with a viewing area and room for a cafe.
“Who knows what we’ll do down the track,” Geoff said.
“Everything we do is looking one step ahead.
“Every morning Barry and I have a coffee after milking and we do pinch ourselves and wonder how it all happened.”
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