Variety is the spice of life — and key to business — at Mountain Blue

Mountain Blue has one of the largest blueberry breeding programs in the world, with 27 new varieties registered and grown in 24 countries.

Blue heaven: Ridley Bell and his daughter Natalie at Mountain Blue, which has one of the largest blueberry breeding programs in the world. Picture: Jason O’Brien

IF you’ve eaten a blueberry anywhere in the world, there’s a good chance it’s Australia’s Mountain Blue variety.

When Ridley Bell first introduced the berry to this country in 1978 — while he was working at a Melbourne research institute — little did he know that 40 years later his family company would have one of the largest blueberry breeding programs in the world.

While Ridley — who turned 70 this year — continues to head up research and development, his son Andrew is the managing director of Mountain Blue.

“We have 27 new varieties registered worldwide, which are grown in 24 countries,” Andrew said.

“We’re second only to Florida University, which has been breeding for a long time. It’s because of Dad’s passion, to the point of obsession, that we’ve been able to accumulate a very significant bank of different germplasm (genetic resource).

“Our genetics program is by far the biggest part of our business, everything else exists because of our genetics.”

The genetics program is overseen by seven staff — from geneticists to lab technicians — at their Tabulam property, as well as joint-venture properties in Victoria and north Queensland. However, as big as the genetics program is, Mountain Blue — which has 80 permanent staff, including Andrew’s siblings who work part-time — is much bigger.

GROW FOR IT

THE company also grows and sells blueberries, with total land plantings of 147ha. Tabulam in NSW is the largest property with 410,000 plants.

There are two other properties in NSW, and one in Queensland, supported by third-party growers around Australia. About 5 per cent of product is exported, with Asia and the United Arab Emirates markets since the early 2000s, and the Australian Blueberry Growers Association pushing for new moves into Japan and China.

About 95 per cent of Mountain Blue’s blueberries are sold to domestic markets, especially the Eureka brand to Coles.

“Eureka started out as a variety, but now it’s a specification for a number of varieties,” Andrew explained.

“We have a new generation of Eureka available to customers, such as Eureka Gold, which sets a new benchmark for quality, size and flavour. We’ll have it in supermarkets in larger quantities in 2021.”

In 2017 the company also added another property to its portfolio with a joint venture in India. Last year 5ha was planted as a trial, with the first harvest in April and May this year, and further expansion in coming years: “We first exported to India and it was well received. So we saw India as an opportunity, with a huge population and a significant middle class that is more health conscious. Land, water and labour is available and attractive.”

NURSERY RHYME

MOUNTAIN Blue also has a commercial nursery, where it sells about 15 of its licensed varieties to 30 third-party growers around Australia.

The company supplies a team of three full-time staff who provide horticultural advice to these growers.

“We sell growers a variety and they sign a license agreement, which protects our intellectual property and they use our branding. We sell the fruit for them, some packed at our packing house (in Tabulam), others pack on their farms.”

Andrew said varieties required different growing techniques, from fertigation to pruning, some better grown infield, others better suited to hydroponics. “The trend is for protected, hydroponic farming, under a tunnel because it yields earlier and creates an environment that brings out the best.”

He said there was also a trend for high density planting. At the Tabulam property plants are spaced at 3300 plants per hectare, whereas at their Atherton Tablelands property in Queensland, the Inicio variety were in pots under tunnels, with 8500 plants per hectare.

Andrew said given the company’s genetic program and network of growers, the focus now was on creating a premium blueberry supply 12 months of the year.

“We supply 12 months of the year to customers now, but we’re working with geography, climate and new varieties to ensure it’s premium year-round,” Andrew said.

He said the company’s other big focus was to create a blueberry that could be picked mechanically. Currently the technology exists, but largely for process blueberries used in the likes of cakes and muffins, but not for fresh berries.

Andrew said they had refined blueberry genetics to create varieties that were shakeable, but mechanisation was not always keeping up.

“No we’re not planning to get into engineering machines, we’re letting others do that,” he said. “Currently we’re working with a hybrid system, combining machine harvest and human labour and we’re seeing good results.”

BRANCHING OUT

AS vast as Mountain Blue is, that’s just an overview of the blueberry program.

Since 2018 it has grown 80,000 raspberry plants, in addition to third-party trials in Victoria and Western Australia; as well as a current breeding program for blackberries, aiming to be commercial by 2022.

Like the blueberries, their aim is for blackberries and raspberries to be premium year-round. Recently Mountain Blue entered a joint venture with strawberry producer Sunny Ridge, in Victoria and Queensland, to market strawberries, under the banner The Berry Collective.

“From the strong blueberry base, it has become important for us to have a whole berry basket,” Andrew said.

Their marketing arm is another key component of the Mountain Blue stable, which was started in 2016, to market all their berry products.

“It was important for us to own our retail partnerships rather than using a third-party intermediary.”

Andrew was formerly a lawyer before coming back to the family business in 2016.

He admitted keeping pace with the company’s diversity is a challenge. “I showed one of my sisters the company structure the other day and it was mind-blowing.

“There’s certainly a lot of things going on across the country and the industry.”