Manildra Group's meaty move

Privately-owned Manildra is looking for growth opportunities in domestic and export markets as it makes the most of long-established ties with producers and food markets.

Since July the Honan family-owned company has taken over its own export licensed meatworks and opened another state-of-the-art boning and retail meat packaging facility.

Best known as a large-scale flour miller, starch and gluten producer, sugar refiner and ethanol and stockfeed business, with crop processing ventures in five regional centres, Manildra began this year's meat moves by taking a 50 per cent stake in the South West Slopes-based Argyle Prestige Meats.

In the following months it also bought the GM Scott meatworks at Cootamundra, launching the Manildra Meat Company in July.

The abattoir's new parent company is continuing an upgrade program at the site, currently spending up to $10 million on various production facilities.

Manildra's owners take considerable pride in the level of investment their business has put towards expanding its various commodity value-adding interests.

The company's operations stretch from the Clarence Valley and Gunnedah in northern NSW to Narrandera in the south and the big starch, gluten and ethanol plant outside Nowra on the South Coast.

It has also operated starch and gluten plants in the United States for 35 years.

In July the Argyle meat business moved from leased boning and packing facilities at Harden abattoir to a high-tech operation at the former Dairy Farmers factory at Nowra.

Manildra bought the mothballed site when the milk plant was closed by National Foods four years ago.

Argyle Prestige Meats, one of Australia's biggest integrated supply chain meat businesses, was started by Harden district livestock producer Lachlan Graham and wife Andrina in 2008.

The company supplies specialty beef and lamb cuts originating from the Graham family property "Argyle" direct to customers, butchers, supermarkets and export buyers.

Using the resources of his family's 4000-hectare farm and other family members in the district, Mr Graham has been able to control the genetic background, raising and finishing of Angus cattle and Dorset-Texel-Suffolk-Merino prime lambs, and the processing and packing of meat.

The process boasts traceability from the paddock to each individual tray-packed and vacuum-sealed meat cut, ensuring quality and consistency.

The Grahams' Argyle and Eight Mile brands maintain a strict policy of grassfed production free of hormone growth promotants (HGP) or genetically modified feed supplements.

With new food service and export markets opening up, their company has also started separately sourcing and processing grainfed and Wagyu product to meet customer orders.

The success of their farmer-run meat supply business attracted attention from Manildra chairman Dick Honan last year after he read about it in The Land, then taste-tested some "Argyle" beef bought at a Thomas Dux premium food store in Sydney.

Talks on making the business a joint venture operation with a handy capital investment from Manildra kicked off in August 2013 and emerged with a 50-50 partnership four months later.

Since July, the Argyle joint venture's lamb and beef slaughter needs have been handled at Cootamundra and the new boning and packing facility at Bomaderry has grown from fewer than 10 staff to about 65.

Manildra's entry into the meat business was no accident or spur-of-the-moment decision, said managing director John Honan, Dick's son.

"We're always looking out for opportunities and meat processing was actually a fairly natural vertical integration move for us," Mr Honan said.

"We've been on the edge of the meat industry for quite a while, partly because we've run beef cattle on our environmental farm at Bomaderry.

"In fact, we first learnt about Cootamundra abattoir being for sale because that's where most of our cattle went - it was an opportune time and fit for our new Nowra operation.

"We've also had good relationships with beef and dairy producers who buy our dry distillers' grain (by-product from the ethanol plant) as stockfeed, and we've been buying wheat from many grain and livestock producers for up to 60 years."