By KATH GANNAWAY
A SEVILLE-EAST company is leading the way in food labelling of frozen berries and other fruit.
A year on from the Hepatitus A scare around frozen imported berries, Matilda’s, founded by third-generation strawberry farmers Matt and Ruth Gallace, have expanded their operation to meet an increasing demand for locally grown frozen berries.
The fruit comes from the family’s Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm which has 800 acres of farmland in Victoria and Queensland. They also buy in fruit from other Australian growers.
Ms Gallace said while the imported berries scare and the resulting increase in demand for safe and verifiable frozen fruit was the impetus behind their move, it was a big decision requiring a huge financial investment.
“We had been doing frozen berries for a while, but there was not really the demand at that stage for commercial quantities,” Ms Gallace said.
When they did take the plunge, setting up a purpose-built factory at the Seville-East farm, they saw transparent labelling as a critical element in building the brand, and in building trust in the product.
Ms Gallace said she has a bit of a giggle when people ask how long it took to get the first batch of commercial berries from the farm to the supermarket refrigerators.
“It was a whole new level of production,” she said.
“It took us longer than we thought.
“We had already been value-adding with our fruit wines and ciders, so initially we looked at what components we could do ourselves, and what use we could make of the existing facility.
“We realised however that we didn’t have the combination of machinery that would satisfy our quality requirements and a key component of that was to do with cross contamination,” she said.
One of the Gallace’s two daughters, has an anaphylactic reaction to nuts, so they know what cross-contamination is all about.
Reading labels has become part of life for the family and Ms Gallace said she struggles to shop for her daughter with 95 per cent of products labelled as “may contain traces of …”.
They know in fact that it may be much less, but the labelling covers the manufacturer.
“What we say is that our fruit is grown, washed and packed on machinery used exclusively for fruit.
“We want to provide information for people to make an informed choice,” Ms Gallace said.
The company is now sourcing other fruit from growers around Australia with whom the family has established long-standing relationships over the past 50 years of farming.
As with the strawberries they grow themselves, Ms Gallace said the new range will list the exact region where the fruit is sourced.
In response to Federal Government moves on origin labelling, Ms Gallace said while having a percentage of Australian food listed on the product is a start, they would like to see more producers list exactly where all of the products in the packet come from.
“We shouldn’t have uncertainty about origin,” she said.
While it’s early days for the expansion into commercial production, Ms Gallace said the response has been fantastic, especially from consumers.
“Aside from the fact that people want to buy Australian grown, they say it’s about the quality and knowing what they are buying.”
Matilda’s could also provide a boost to Yarra Valley growers.
“We have our own wonderful fruit, and long-standing relationships, but we welcome enquiries from other growers,” she said.
