CAROLYN Creswell says the secret to her business’s evolution from a small-time muesli operation to an international success is the "fruits" (and nuts, seeds and grains) of the Australian soil.
Ms Creswell, who appeared as keynote speaker at an Australian Agribusiness Association forum last week, is one half of the namesake of the Carman's muesli brand, which she started with her friend Manya at the age of 18 and savings of just $1000 in 1992.
According to Ms Creswell, integral to the now-$50-million-dollar-a-year company has been its wholesome image - fulled by a dedication to Australian produce.
Get her started on the business of sourcing the oats, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, rice and cranberries which made up just some of her muesli products, and she was full of empathy and respect for the Australian farmers who supplied her.
“It can be so hard,” she said, noting the unexpected natural forces of devastation which could affect her suppliers.
“I heard of one guy, an almond grower, who had his whole orchard just devastated by weevils … he had to have the lot fumigated for something like $90,000.”
Supply uncertainty, however, was not something Carman’s struggled with.
With a network of hundreds of suppliers throughout Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, Ms Creswell said even the globally-soaring prices of soft commodities had not had much impact on her business.
She had more to worry about from the impact of the expensive Australian dollar and GM products – which she said were the antithesis to Carman’s wholesome image.
“We don’t use GM grain, and that’s a big thing,” she said.
She had experienced some frustration recently as she sought letters of guarantee from her oat suppliers that they were, and would remain, GM-free.
“At the moment our oat place won’t say that they’re going to be GM-free. I just think, well we’re not growing GM oats in Australia, so how can we not give that guarantee? I actually think it’s a disaster. I just think Australia should have stayed GM-free.”
The other area in which Ms Creswell would like to see the Australian oat sector pull up its socks was in a field in which Canada provided a leading example.
“In Canada some growers are able to say that their oats are gluten-free, and they’re doing this big push based on the fact that they’re not having cross-contamination in the field. In Australia we’re not doing that. I think there’s a real opportunity to be able to look at avoiding the cross-contamination from non-gluten-free crops, and Australia is just not doing that yet.”
What her oat supply-chain did excel at, however, was keeping abreast of a trend that had changed the face of oat products in the past decade – low-GI.
As the magic word-of-the-moment for cereals, snacks and health-foods, it was one of the reasons Carman’s products - which include bars, rounds and muesli mixes – are so popular.
Ms Creswell said the ability to select a precise tolerance-point for the oats she used was important.
“We’re building ourselves around the philosophy that we really like the thicker rolled oats, because they’re low-GI. I think also now that GI is so ‘the trend’ that being able to understand the impact of different rolling methods and what they will do to GI, is very important.
“We get factories which can narrow it down for us. If we get something that’s a 0.9mm in a rolled oat, that’s a very different product to what we end up with if we use a 0.7mm. So it becomes just a matter of trying to understand that process and what the impact means to us down the track.”
The other thematic card Carman’s had up its sleeve, which was part of a wider industry marketing strategy, was the come-back being made by so-called ‘ancient grains’.
Chia seeds for example, were making their presence felt in Carman’s products, preceded by their reputation as an old, erstwhile forgotten ‘wonder grain’.
While Carman’s annual revenue was no match for the hundreds of millions pulled in by such muesli leviathans as Uncle Tobys, it was a brand tenaciously hanging on to its place in the market.
Starting as a trial in 26 Coles’ stores, Carman’s products can now be found in both major supermarket chains, aboard Qantas flights, and in 26 countries outside Australia, which was why Ms Creswell did not blink when she said the end goal was for Carman’s to be stocked in every nation across the globe.
And, if you could believe the growth Ms Creswell had witnessed, from delivering boxes of muesli in the back of her car, to watching 3 semi-trailers parked outside her current headquarters, waiting to load up, then you could believe anything was possible for Carman’s.
While the taste was all-important to Carman’s success, it seemed Ms Creswell’s products tasted all the sweeter for the fact they are all grown by Aussie farmers.
Ms Creswell too, has discovered the delights of country living, having just purchased 100 acres adjacent to her home’s 2 acre block in Beena in South Gippsland.
“It’s great. We’ll have cattle on it. I think it’ll be Black Angus, but I want to look into it," she said.
“We go there every weekend ... I’d love to live country life all the time, but it’s not practical. My kids however, get all the city air out of their lungs – I just tell them ‘breathe in!’”
