By Robert Giles, SPC CEO
THE Goulburn Valley has a rich history as the food bowl of Australia and is the heartland for manufacturing and agribusiness, it’s where SPC got its start over 100 years ago. Today, we’re focused on making Australian-made products but bringing them to the global stage.
Last year highlighted Australian consumers are voting with their feet and buying Australian grown and that demand is only continuing to grow. Our sector has the opportunity to continue to be a key driver when it comes to Australia’s post-covid economic recovery, by collaborating to create new products that will appeal to customers locally and globally.
Australia’s food and agriculture sector is the envy of the world and we need to ensure it keeps going from strength to strength. After all food supplies one in three Australian manufacturing jobs and value-added food exports have grown from an $18B industry to $28B since 2013.
At SPC, we are taking full advantage of this opportunity to bring more high quality and value-added products from Australia to the world.
We have made a deliberate decision to disrupt our own thinking when it comes to agribusiness. For a long time, we focused on traditional products like fruit, baked beans and spaghetti.
We are moving beyond the orchard because with disruption comes innovation. We have spent a lot of time identifying complementary businesses and sectors of growth that support the work we are doing. Our product line already looks very different, we have already introduced:
• Ready-made meals: through our Kuisine acquisition
• Beverages: through our Helping humans acquisition
• New and exciting products like pomegranates: though our Pomlife acquisition
• Plant-based meat alternatives: through our Jackfruit product launch
• New Australian made flavours: with our joint venture-partner Döhler
Food companies around the world know that the demand for value-added products is growing at a phenomenal rate. In Australia, due to the richness of our soil, our agribusiness sector is the envy of the world because we have the ability to produce a vast array of value-added products whether that’s meat, dairy or plant-based. If we can grow it, we will make it.
In particular, the Goulburn Valley is in the enviable position to continue to be a key driver, based on our location, our people and the land. Today, we are producing everything from food and beverage to health care products.
Additional investment in our region has a significant flow effect on our community from our local restaurants to our sporting clubs, it’s good news for our region. It means that our young people will be enticed to stay here and we will attract talent to our city and the way of life that we have worked so hard to cultivate here in Shepparton.
I’ve worked in agribusiness my entire career and in that time, I’ve keenly watched and been part of companies as they work to diversify and innovate. It’s also why I joined SPC because I wanted to help redefine what the agribusiness model looks like.
We are making great strides towards our vision by bringing in a team of people with the expertise and the passion to help us achieve our goals. We’ve recently made several new appointments in our senior leadership team, including our new chief operations officer, Matt McMichael, and chief commercial officer, Bree Vidovich, who bring a wealth of international experience in the FMCG space with brands like Heinz, Nestle and Ferrero.
We need to keep working and to keep challenging ourselves to redefine what being an agribusiness means. Whether that’s new and exciting food and beverage products or health and beauty or something else, anything that comes out of the soil, including from the Goulburn Valley, has the potential to help redefine what SPC produces.
