The Greenham family has been in the meat industry for five generations. HW Greenham & Sons, a multi-million dollar beef processing business, employs over 100 people at its headquarters in Melbourne and its two processing sites in Tongala, northern Victoria, and Smithton, on the north-western point of Tasmania.
These have the capacity to process 540 carcasses and 480 carcasses a day respectively. The company sells its products through foodservice and retail channels under two main brands – Cape Grim and Greenham Natural – as well as Pure Black Angus and Robbins Island Wagyu.
The privately owned business, in its current form, was created by managing director Peter Greenham’s father, who built the Tongala facility in 1993 and then acquired the Smithton facility in 2002.
In 2007, Greenhams started working with Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) to implement its Meat Standards Australia (MSA) program, which is the main quality-grading system in this country.
“The MSA grading system is backed by a lot of science and consumer testing, which guarantees people a good meal – not just from the primary cuts but the secondary cuts as well because it explains the best cooking method for each cut of meat, allowing consumers to get the most out of it,” Peter Greenham says. “Most meat companies in Australia develop their brands around it.
“It’s widely recognised in the food industry and consumers are really starting to recognise the logo too as the major supermarkets have been pushing it. More and more consumers understand it as a mark of quality.”
MSA-graded meat commands a premium of between five and 15 per cent at both a retail and wholesale level.
The program, which took a couple of years to get in place, required the company to get its farmers and processing plants accredited and its meat graders had to be trained in order to be registered as MSA graders.
Greenhams recently achieved 90.6 per cent MSA compliance, a factor Greenham attributes to strong relationships with the 1000 producers who supply more than 70,000 carcasses a year to the Smithton plant.
Buyers from Greenhams visit each farm to select cattle and provide carcass feedback within three days of processing. The company focuses on providing suppliers with as much carcass data as possible so they can adjust on-farm management to deal with any compliance issues.
In order to come up with a quality rating, the MSA standard takes into account a wide range of factors, from the age and breed of the cattle to the levels of marbling, colour and consistency of the meat. Additionally, each score is done on a cut-by-cut basis, Greenham says.
“[For example], you could have an animal with a five-star tenderloin and a three-star chuck roll,” he says. “You’d find the tenderloin in a fine-dining restaurant, but the chuck wouldn’t make a premium steak.”
When the company started grading for MSA, it discovered it was getting a lot of carcasses in the four best boning groups.
“It was an opportunity to market our beef as a premium product, so we developed the Cape Grim label for grass-fed bullocks in the MSA grading groups one to four,” Greenham says. “And, we relaunched our Greenham Natural beef as MSA grading groups one to six.”
The MSA grading has allowed the company to capitalise on Tasmania’s image for its Cape Grim brand by combining grass-fed beef’s environmental credentials with the MSA stamp of quality.
The brand is now associated with high-end restaurants across Australia and in a number of international markets, such as Japan, the US and Korea, and the company has enjoyed double-digit growth over the last three years.
“MSA is a critical factor in maintaining this restaurant market, because it guarantees our clients a consistent product,” Greenham says. “Neil Perry charges between $50 and $80 for a Cape Grim steak, so MSA allows him to back our product and guarantee quality in every steak.”
While the export market used to account for as much as 70 per cent of the business, the strong Australian dollar has seen this figure drop to around 30 per cent in recent years.
“Whether we get a better price locally or abroad depends on the cut,” Greenham says. “For trim and certain high-volume items, export is our only option, but when you’re talking fine-dining cuts like tenderloin, then the domestic market is best.
“It used to be the other way around when the dollar was lower, but now the domestic market is demanding better cuts.”
Greenham says the company is now focusing on the high end of the domestic market and trying to push further into the local retail market with its Cape Grim brand.
The brand has previously only been available through foodservice channels, but it is now moving into the retail space and is being sold at David Jones, Harris Farm Markets and other boutique retailers.
Greenhams is already supplying restaurants in each state, and retailers in every state apart from South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Its immediate plan is to extend its retail presence by introducing retail-ready packaging from Cryovac that will give the products up to eight weeks’ shelf life. Greenham says the packaging machinery should be installed within a couple of months and it has already had new pack designs and logos created.
Retail-ready packaging will provide Greenhams with the opportunity to raise awareness of the Cape Grim brand with the MSA logo acting as a quality assurance.
The new designs highlight that the product is from Tasmania, along with its clean, green reputation, and that it is free from GMO, hormones and antibiotics. The designs also feature QR codes, which allow the consumer to trace the cut of meat back to the farmer and explains how he grew the cattle and other information.
Another key facet of its retail strategy is to ensure it’s getting the best price for each cut of meat. Greenham says he can only sell the best cuts of meat to the restaurant industry, but there’s far greater diversity in the retail sector.
The company previously relied on third-party manufacturers to use these lesser cuts of beef, but it has now invested in equipment that will allow it to bring some of this work in house.
“You might sell a strip loin to a restaurant and they’ll trim it up and use the excess for sausages or hamburgers, but really you’re only talking about three or four cuts of meat,” Greenham says. “But in retail, there’s a range of secondary cuts that you can use for roast beef, or diced and minced beef.
“We don’t want to just use the top four cuts; it’s about trying to promote the whole animal.”
