Family dairy business diversifies amid changing market
The nation's largest exporter of long-life milk is also one of the biggest processors of plant-based milk alternatives. Leading it is a family of farmers determined to keep the future of Australian dairy bright by thinking outside the box.
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00:00And then you do a herd testing?
00:03Yep, herd test every month.
00:05We've got one next week actually, so that'll be fun.
00:08It's not the usual sight.
00:09The CEO traipsing around a muddy cow paddock, the dairy lingo easily flowing.
00:16But for Michael Perich, the milking shed is a throwback to his childhood.
00:21I love being out on the farm, I love being especially out with the cows and it's the
00:25fresh air.
00:26It is really good and just being able to talk to those people.
00:30Growing up on a dairy farm on the outskirts of Western Sydney meant early starts, lots
00:36of free labour and observing hard work in action.
00:41His Croatian immigrant grandparents came to Australia in 1938 with nothing.
00:46My grandfather immigrated across with my grandmother as well, they met on the boat.
00:52And it's just been a history in Australia about growing business, you know, especially
00:56for migrants.
01:00They started a dairy in 1951 with just 25 cows.
01:04And today, the dairy company boasts a total of 15,000 milking cows across three dairy
01:10operations in Australia.
01:16They are now the major shareholders in NUMI, Australia's biggest export of UHT, or ultra
01:22high temperature treated milk.
01:25It's also one of the biggest plant milk processes in the country.
01:29So I became CEO four years ago, but our family started supplying them in about 2003.
01:38It's a monolithic operation, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
01:43The machines never stop humming, the shifts rolling here at the Shepparton factory in
01:48regional Victoria.
01:50You know, all the protein shakes and recipes you see touted online by fitness fanatics.
01:55Well, that's actually a market that NUMI is also targeting.
01:58And it's an area that's booming.
02:01Protein is always surplus generally in dairy milk, and it was an opportunity for us to
02:05look at how do we take some of those protein fractionations and put them into other products
02:10to deliver them into the other forms for Australian consumers to look for.
02:18One of those proteins that's been a real focus is lactoferrin, a cow's milk extract.
02:24The CSIRO predicts it could be a $10 billion industry by 2030.
02:30But to produce just one kilogram of lactoferrin, around 10,000 litres of milk is required.
02:37NUMI currently produces around 8% of the global lactoferrin supply, or 25 metric tonnes.
02:44We don't want to just become a commodity player.
02:48We want to make sure we're bringing value and we're reinventing new products that deliver
02:54that taste and that health benefits to the people that purchase our product.