Angus Irwin

How did the expansion to Ireland and South Africa come about? Was it something that you were looking for?

Certainly the Irish one has been more strategic and we are just getting our structures right here and models correct so we can do more of an international expansion.

The South African one was quite interesting because it was derived from a company by the name of the Rembrandt Group, which is one of the biggest trading companies in the world. They owned Rainbow Chicken which is sort of the South African equivalent of Inghams. And in the mid- to late-1990s, at the end of apartheid and things like that, Rainbow Chicken made their first loss in many, many years in South Africa and they sent their board members on a tour around the world looking at places of how to value add to their manure and various other resources in their poultry business. And for whatever reason they chose us to partner with. I’ve got no idea why; I mean in the mid-1990s we were a pretty rough and ready sort of entity.

Then a couple of other issues arose in South Africa, one of the directors of that company decided to resign from Rainbow Chicken and he ended up being our licensee in South Africa. And then a few more bumps along the way. We started in Durban and now the operation is in Cape Town, and they actually now produce more fertiliser than we do.

And have you more actively pursued Ireland as an entry to Europe?

Yes, absolutely. One of the great issues we have dealing on organic products is that no matter how successful we are here, people always like to see proof of that in their own backyard. But for going into the EU, short of taking 10 years and a few million dollars we would never be able to develop the protocols which would allow our products to be exported or imported into the EU. So we see the Ireland factory as opening up the whole of the EU to be able to then deliver a product from there for trials. For example, we have already sent some stuff into Poland and Italy out of Ireland and really that will be our platform for expansion. Although we do export as well a fair bit around the place.

I know one of your big growth challenges is capacity, having enough factories to make more products. What can you do about it?

I have always had interesting discussions about that. Sales are not ultimately our problem which is almost strange to talk about, it is more about going “we are going to make this much this year” and marry that up to our production capacity.

One of the difficulties we have when we are dealing with people generally, is that they think about fertiliser as just a commodity and we just get another shipload, but ours is probably more like making a wine. So it’s a matter of a great deal of planning going into it, because there is still plenty of raw materials about.

One of the things we are looking at doing at the moment is putting a factory up into the eastern seaboard because at the moment we are delivering nationally out of Adelaide and that brings an enormous amount of freight costs. Just on the freight saving for example, we are paying nearly $200 a tonne to Queensland and there’s nearly 3,000 tonnes going up there, well that is around $600,000 in freight a year – which pretty much builds part of your factory.

How advanced are you along that line?

Very advanced. That is why a lot of what our company is about logistics as much as anything. We spend more of our time planning on being able to get it out and around the place rather than worrying too much about sales, which tend to just happen if we follow the right process.

And I gather you are also building a brewery, although not quite for beer.

When we do trials on our products against raw chicken “waste”, people try one tonne of ours against eight tonnes of chicken waste and yet ours will out perform it. And I have always wondered for many, many years, how can that happen?

And I then started playing around with some liquids and we had a microbiologist here, and his theory, and I am pretty sure it is correct, is that it has got very little to do with the actual nutrition you put on it has got more to do with the actual bacteria which then help break down organic materials in the soils to then make things available to the plant. Much the same as what happens or is meant to happen when you drink a product like Yakult, which is meant to proliferate the beneficial bacteria in your gut to make everything more efficient.

So on that basis, I’ve been brewing these bugs in beer brewing equipment going back six years and we have upgraded, upgraded and upgraded and we are now bringing out a probiotic liquid for plant which is called GoGo Juice. The product is ready to go so we are just launching as we speak and we already need to upgrade our production as it is proving to be extremely popular.

There are a lot of elements to this business – marketing, product development, education, production, logistics. Does that present a challenge?

It certainly is for me. 

The beauty about this role is that you have a number of ideas and literally see them form from a tiny idea and get them out into the market place.

One of the frustrating things that I have had over the years is that we started off doing that, we were very successful and then you move to the next level where you are suddenly a mechanical engineer and group psychologist and you move further and further away from the things that you are really good at.

If we probably go back four years, we did a lot of work on our culture and values. And that really drove us getting the right people into our business. From getting the right people into the business we have been able to develop a lot quicker in a more common direction and so the issues where I used to have a lot of problems with because I am not mechanical, I’ve got the right people in that area now.

So what does that allow you to do? More product development?

It is the area that I really like. And one of the things that we have also just discovered when you are talking about a business like ours that is not a corporation is we put a business development manager on, he kept on coming back and saying in our current structure that the people want to do business with you. So where I am probably heading in my role is a business development role. So it allows you to sit outside the business and work within it if that makes sense, rather than being caught up inside the business where you can’t see the wood for the trees.

And is the international potential of this business your biggest goal?  

I think that is ultimately where we see ourselves. I mean really, we see ourselves as a licensed business, absolutely. Having said that, I just see overseas as an extension of the distribution channels that we have here anyway.