A critical, drought-induced water shortage was threatening the sustainability of one of Victoria’s leading meat processing businesses. Necessity has proved to be the mother of a green innovation.
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Managing Director: Rob Radford
Company: Robert Radford & Son Pty Ltd
Business type: Red meat abattoir, wholesale processing and retail butchers
Founded:Founded in 1946 by Robert Radford Snr; 1974 Rob Radford Jnr began butcher's apprenticeship; 1990 Rob Radford Jnr appointed Managing Director
Employees: 100
Turnover: $30 million (2009-10)
Head office: Head Office: Warragul, Victoria
Contact details: 03 5623 5546
The Robert Radford & Son Story
This is the story of a gap year that became the journey of a lifetime. In 1974, after spending six years cosseted away as a boarder at Melbourne’s Scotch College, 17-year-old Rob Radford deferred university to help out at his dad’s butcher shop in Warragul, Victoria. Back then, the business comprised a butcher shop in Warragul and a slaughterhouse on five hectares. Fast forward 32 years and Radfords has grown into a widely acknowledged industry leader in red meat processing. It occupies 64 hectares of freehold land and processes 65,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and lambs each year.
Radfords measures its success by much more than simple increases in volume and revenue; the business is an industry leader in environmentally sustainable production and has been a pioneer of both certified organic and ethnically sensitive meat products. In January 2010 Radfords installed an innovative system to recycle all its production waste water to potable quality. If adopted nationwide, the system could potentially help the Australian red meat industry to conserve about 13 gigalitres of water annually.
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Key learning points:
- Get Help- Don’t ever be too proud to seek outside help. When Rob reframed his business problem as an issue of state and national importance, financial assistance and technical solutions began to materialise.
- Resource Care- How green is your business? By working to minimise resource use through recycling and better production technology, you can improve your bottom line and add a green sheen to your public corporate persona. Customers, staff and governments are increasingly conscious of organisations’ green credentials.
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The Challenge
Water supply had become an increasingly serious problem for Radfords — and the rest of Victoria — in recent years. In the past, Radfords met its water requirements by drawing from large springs and water catchments on properties purchased adjacent to its plant. But the prolonged drought meant that this water supply wasn’t enough to meet the plant’s needs.
Rob says: “In the summer of 2007 we started experiencing occasional water shortages. By our peak processing period in 2008, we were buying tanker loads on a regular basis. We needed 6–8 loads a week at a cost of over $3,000, which was unsustainable. Praying and hoping for the long-expected drought breaking rains was not going to solve the problem. It had to be addressed from the perspective of a stay-in-business investment. Our business would have stopped. That’s how serious it was.”
The Solution
Water is critical to the plant’s operation. The meat processing facility uses about 120,000 litres per day for tasks such as sterilising knives and washing down and sanitising the plant. Rob says: “There are ways to cut down water use such as dry clean-ups but we still have to use a certain amount of water to comply with food safety regulations.”
Radfords looked at two potential solutions to the water supply problem. One involved piping town water five kilometres from Warragul to the plant. The other required the business to sink a bore. Neither solution proved feasible. Just getting a mains pipeline from Warragul was estimated to cost at least $1 million plus other internal infrastructure costs. In any case, the town grid could not supply the volume of water Radfords required. An application to sink a bore was also rejected because it would deplete the region’s overall water reserve.
Rob says: “Our good standing in both the community and industry encouraged me to go to both the state and federal governments to seek assistance and they both invited us to submit appropriate proposals.” Following extensive technical consultation, WaterWerx Pty Ltd provided an assessment for a water recycling project costing about $1million. The project commenced in August 2009 and is based on an ultrafiltration system that recycles effluent water and treats it to potable quality. This means that the water has had all contaminants removed and is safe to use in the plant for red meat processing.
The project attracted $210,000 funding from the Federal Government’s Retooling for Climate Change program and — with a subsequent expansion that integrated an energy recovery component — $440,000 from the Victorian Government’s Regional Infrastructure Development Fund. Rob says: “We’ve been given great support from both governments. We couldn’t have done the project without their help.”
The project began in August 2009 and the new system is still being tested and refined. Initial results have been promising. Rob says: “We have shown that the system is fail-safe and early tests have produced magnificent water. This is cutting edge stuff. It hasn’t been done in the red meat processing industry in Australia and we’ve had many enquiries from both colleagues and other food processors around Australia.”
Rob says: “Our aim and responsibility is to ensure that the system meets expectations of performance and reliability. But any new technology or application typically has both unexpected issues and opportunities. For example, as a result of bringing in specialist electrical engineers, we revised the integration elements of the project to facilitate a much greater level of automation for the project components and the interface between plant and equipment. However, we experienced unforseen problems when operating the system at very low ambient temperatures; this problem has only recently been overcome.”
Radford’s objective is to recycle all its processing water but that requires demonstrating the absolute integrity of the system. It must pass rigorous testing and sample certification over a period sufficient to comprehend all of its operating parameters. Rob says: “We currently restrict our use of the recycled water to the 30,000 litres per day required for washing stockyards and feeding stock. PrimeSafe [the Victorian statutory authority that regulates meat production] approval will allow us to utilize the 90,000 litres a day required for processing and will provide all the water required to meet our current needs and our future growth.”
Radfords long-term viability hinges on the project’s success. Rob says: “There are three elements to the costs of water for processing food: buying water, delivering the water to plant and disposing of waste water at the other end. If you can control those costs, you’ve got long-term viability.”
Apart from his duties as MD, Rob is involved in a number of Victorian Government advisory committees, state and national industry committees and the local community. In 2008 and 2009 he was chairman of the Lardner Events organisation, which stages events such as the annual agricultural field day Farmworld that attracts up to 60,000 visitors and has an exhibitor list of about 700. As chairman, Rob also guided the organisation’s development of a $5-million exhibition centre as the centre piece of their Lardner Park site.
The Result
Winning the Victorian and National 2009 Telstra Business Award for Social Responsibility topped off numerous community and regional business awards won by Radfords, including the 2008 NAB Environment and Energy Management Award and the Baw Baw Shire Business Excellence Award. Rob says: “It’s been an amazing journey. You can do it if you have good people around you and you love what you’re doing.”