A funding injection from the Coles Nurture Fund allowed boutique pork pie producer Pacdon Park to grow its business dramatically. Doris Prodanovic reports.
Eight months ago, a small business butcher and pork pie producer based on the New South Wales and Victoria border was making 100 pies per hour on a well-engineered, hand-operated machine. Today, Pacdon Park pumps out 2000 pies an hour while maintaining quality and consistency, reducing waste, and saving power and space thanks to its new, customised machinery and production line.
“We’d been trading for ten years when the Coles Nurture Fund came along. When you’re growing a business from nothing, it’s slow and steady,” Pacdon Park co-founder Jim Arrowsmith told Food & Drink Business. The company was among the recipients in Round 5 of the Fund, receiving a $221,577 interest free loan to buy new equipment and enhance efficiencies on site.
“The fund has made our wish list happen faster and easier, which has been great. We’ve just installed a pork pie machine, customised from the UK, a new dough spiral machine for our pastry, an automatic jellier and metal detectors and such for the likes of having our products in Coles.”
Scaling up
Pacdon Park is one of the few businesses in Australia producing pork pies using traditional British methods. Served cold, the pork pies have a pork filling surrounded by a layer of jellied pork stock in a crust pastry.
