Venus Citrus in the Riverland makes it mark

The bank was set to foreclose when Helen Aggeletos took over her family’s citrus business in South Australia’s Riverland. Read how she turned it all around.

Ripe for picking: Venus Citrus, run by Helen Aggeletos, continues to look for new and niche citrus varieties.

THE bank was set to foreclose when Helen Aggeletos took over her family’s citrus business in South Australia’s Riverland.

“My father had suffered a major stroke and I decided in 1989 to keep the business open. The farms had been lost and at that point it was just a packing shed,” Helen said.

Three decades on and P Costi and Sons – trading as Venus Citrus – now not only has a state-of-the-art packing shed, but 45 growers across the Riverland, yielding 16,000 to 18,000 tonnes of citrus annually, in about 18 varieties including 12 mandarin, as well as tangelo, grapefruit and oranges, harvested and packed from April to December, when they have 90 staff.

Up to 60 per cent of product is exported around the world (excluding Europe), and domestically through the three major supermarkets.

In the past 12 months Helen and her three children have bought two farms in Loxton, planting out 30ha, hoping to grow to 120ha within five years, specialising in varieties new to the market, such as a red flesh seedless mandarin called Early Sicily and a large, sweet, seedless Ipilado blood orange.

Helen said the company’s success was based on a combination of factors: new varieties, branding, packaging, and innovative crop management methods.

“There are some big players in the citrus market and after a bad two-year drought in 2012 we realised as a family business we couldn’t compete with them,” she said.

“Ten years ago we were just another brand on the market trying to compete. It was do or die so we took a different direction.

“We travelled overseas to see best practices, where we could make a difference.”

FRESH START

ONE of their first major changes was the creation of Eco Citrus in 2014, which is a protocol for participating growers to adopt on-farm practices to reduce chemical use and be environmentally sustainable.

The protocol, which requires growers to be certified through Freshcare Environmental, specifies practices such as Integrated Pest Management, where possible using beneficial insects as biological controls rather than chemicals, using mulch to reduce synthetic fertilisers and maintain soil moisture, reduce waste and reuse, as well as minimising water use through monitored irrigation systems.

“Initially we looked at becoming organic, but while there was a premium, a lot of growers we saw weren’t that viable.

“We then looked at eco bananas, with the red tip, but for citrus it wasn’t as profitable. So we realised we could create a model ourselves by working with our growers in workshops.”

Eight of Venus Citrus’ 45 growers participate in the scheme, supplying about 60 per cent of the company’s total tonnage, with all their fruit tested for chemical residue.

Helen said the protocol not only helped the environment, but improved fruit quality and consistency.

“A lot of exporting countries have different MRL (maximum residue limit) requirements in different chemicals.

“Many are getting very tough, so growing practices have to adapt to that if you want to continue to export.”

SEEING RED

A POINT of differentiation for Venus Citrus is in their varieties. On the Aggeletos’s own farm they grow a red flesh seedless mandarin called Early Sicily, which was bred in Italy and has Plant Breeder’s Rights protection, managed in Australia by the Australian Nurserymen’s Fruit Improvement Company.

The Ipilado blood orange is a new variety, not yet on the market, which is sweeter and larger than a normal blood orange, and seedless.

Venus Citrus has also become known for its pink-fleshed seedless Cara Cara navel, which became available in the US in the 1980s.

“At the start, customers thought it looked like just another navel, but we did a lot of promotion and trials and elevated it to another level and our market now knows to look for it.

“Niche varieties are another way to give us a market edge and promote our products differently to the larger players.”

Venus Citrus now also sells more mandarins domestically than oranges, based on shopper demand.

“Millennial shoppers want quick and easy, such as easy peeling, seedless mandarins, and more people now live in apartments so don’t want big 3kg bags of oranges, but small packages.”

BRAND POWER

HELEN said another key change that had brought success was in packaging, presentation and branding.

They moved to punnets and pouch bags, while branding fruit with “Beloved”, with the Ipilado to be labelled “Beloved Reds”, for instance.

“Now customers recognise the Venus brand and know it’s a reliable, consistent product, that we do different varieties.

“But at the end of the day it’s the end product that matters and our relationship with the grower.”

In the packing shed, development is constant, with the family just finishing another major upgrade this year to a grader, allowing for infra-red brix sensoring, and grading according to blemish, dryness and density, as well as automatic volume fill.

Helen’s father started farming citrus in 1973, with his sons working alongside their father.

Helen had a degree in social work before opting to take over the family business.

She said there was no secret to her management style.

“A lot of it is common sense. We look where the trends are going, look at Citrus Australia forecasts and have a five-year plan.

“At the same time we don’t want to follow what everyone else is doing.

“We always look outside the circle.”

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