Business Opportunities Queensland Australia

we've been in business since 1954. the australianapple has got a good, clean, green perception in overseas markets, so we've actually expandedand developed into new varieties and new techniques. we've seen yields lift from 10 to 15 tonnesper hectare to a current level of about 40 tonnes per hectare. part of that strategy,the industry in partnership with the queensland government decided to invest in developingscab resistant apple varieties. the kalei is the first apple that has come out of thatprogram. with kalei, no sprays are required, so that's a considerable saving for the growers.with the new systems we're developing between daff and the growers, with kalei, we can producecrops of between 80 and 100 tonnes per hectare, every year. so that's going to be an importantfactor in the drive towards higher producing

systems going forward. and we have doubledwhat the industry average was 15 years ago. the australian beef is definitely known worldwideand they trust our beast. efficiency is the key to our industry. here, if we're not efficient,we're not competitive. and we were a full set abattoir to japan going back 15 years,now we supply umpteen different countries. so it's brought along a lot more break uporders, what we say that it we're breaking the beast down into smaller and smaller cuts,so this shed here needs to produce full time. when i first started, i worked in the boningroom at wingham beef exports, every afternoon, anyone older than 21 had to go downstairsand load cartons for four hours, now we're putting in robots to do exactly what we weredoing then. the automation comes in when the

slicer places the primus on the belt, thecomputer then recognises what that piece is, we're packing the carton, labelling it upso we know exactly what's in that product and then we're sending it off to be chilled.and we're able to load it out on the following day in a container. what it's done is, itsreduce our storage time from probably two to three days down to 24 hours. and they'regoing to a wider range of destinations being it domestic or export.so at the moment we have a co-investment between daff and grdc which is the national mungbeanimprovement project. they provide us with a grounding and a link to growers, but alsoto markets at the other end of the value chain. globally mungbean is a really important pulsecrop, especially in south east asia, so we're

heavily reliant on overseas markets. the programshad a really big effect and it's really supported the industry to double its production to about70,000 tonnes in the last 10 years. what we're trying to do is to pull a lot of project opportunitiestogether, a lot of international research, and we're working to breed new mungbean varietiesthat are higher yielding and more disease resistant. i think queensland agriculturehas a really strong future and the recognition of the importance of tropical pulses is areally solid grounding for meeting the government's target of doubling agricultural productionby 2040. i guess to some extent we're overwhelmed with opportunities at the moment.