Family businesses find sweet success in fruit and vegetable export market

What’s in a name? When it comes to Bundaberg, plenty.

Whether it is the city’s famous ginger beer, signature rum or high-quality produce, local families have capitalised on the regional Queensland name to tickle taste buds and find sweet success on the international stage.

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks is one of Australia’s most recognisable soft drink brands.

Over five decades, the family-owned company has grown from two workers to 240 and is now one of the region’s biggest private employers.

“Our family borrow the name of Bundaberg and we feel so a part of this town that we’ve decided to invest the largest investment we’ve ever done in this community,” chief executive John McLean said.

It recently opened a $150 million super brewery in Bundaberg that drew the Prime Minister in for a pit stop and a non-alcoholic tipple.

Mr McLean said the facility would double production and increase exports to more than 60 countries across the world, including the prized markets of the United States, China and South Korea.

“We are going to take Bundaberg to the world from here,” he said.

Regional business driving economy

Central Queensland University’s Professor of International Business Quamrul Alam said it was a “fascinating” story that showed how regional business was helping to drive the national economy.

“Because it grew from a family-owned small regional business to a regional-but-global business,” he said.

Professor Alam said utilising location and locally produced ingredients, including ginger and sugarcane, was part of the success story.

“This company has maintained a very good relationship with the farmers, and that relationship helps the company to secure quality inputs,” he said.

Mr McLean said staying local was paramount.

“One hundred per cent of the ginger is grown within a 400-kilometre radius of our facility,” he said.

Mr McLean said while all brewing still happened in Bundaberg, logistically the company needed to expand bottling operations in Australia and overseas.

“Moving glass bottles up and down the road 400 kilometres is not the best thing to do all the time,” he said.

Waste becoming international export

For the Bundaberg-based Dang family, it is waste not, want not.

They are the second biggest strawberry grower in Australia, but as their crop has grown each year, so has the waste.

The family has turned to the lucrative freeze-dried fruit market with a $15 million factory to give produce a second life.

“We have foods that are oversize or undersize but still perfectly good and delicious fruit,” Gina Dang said.

“Our mission is to help our business grow in Australia and export market, [and] to help other farmers and other businesses to grow.

“We are already working with not just our strawberries, but other berries, mangoes, apple, and we will be looking down the track to [other] options.”

Queensland’s Treasurer Cameron Dick said the worldwide fruit snack market was worth about $22 billion.

“We are so pleased to see families like Gina’s take this step to invest in the community,” Mr Dick said.

“It’s about food, it’s about family, but more importantly it’s about the future of Bundaberg and Queensland.”