Brownes scoops dairy awards

The Balcatta-based processor’s own brand products and Farmdale brand products made for Aldi Australia supermarkets, across flavoured milks, white milk and yoghurt categories, won two gold and nine silver medals.

As well, Brownes’ Chill Double Espresso won a special category award, the Tate & Lyle Award for the highest scoring coffee flavoured milk, with 18.5 points.

Chill Double Espresso also won one of the gold medals and the other was won by Brownes’ Farmdale RAM Iced Coffee sold by Aldi.

Brownes was awarded silver medals for its Extra Creamy Milk and full-cream milk, Farmdale Lactose-Free milk, Chill Chocolate and Farmdale RAM Chocolate flavoured milk, along with its Traditional Yoghurt and vanilla bean, mango and passionfruit and banana and honey flavoured yoghurts.

Next best was Bannister Downs Dairy, Northcliffe, with two gold medals – for Mango Smoothie flavoured milk and Double Cream in the rich cream category – and eight silver medals for chocolate, spearmint and coffee flavoured milks, All Lite and Farm Fresh white milks and its cream.

Mundella Foods, Mundijong, and Harvey Fresh, Harvey, each won one gold and five silver medals,

Mundella’s gold was for Marinated Feta cheese and its five silver for Greek, natural, honey and vanilla flavoured yoghurts and reduced-fat yoghurt.

Harvey Fresh’s gold was for Cappuccino reduced-fat flavoured milk and its silver for Free Range full-cream and HiLo and Jersey Girl full-cream, lactose-free ESL (Extended Shelf Life) and full-cream UHT (Ultra High Temperature) milks.

Cambray Cheese, Nannup, won silver with Boursin Garlic and Chives and Chilli Gouda cheeses but missed a medal in the sheep milk cheese section.

During the past 12 months Brownes attracted criticism from dairy farmers for refusing to increase its farmgate price paid to suppliers beyond the 42-45 cents a litre range, when competitors Harvey Fresh and Lion Dairy and Drinks paid about 52 cents and 54c a litre normal price respectively.

Brownes also caused controversy when it dropped top suppliers Dale Hanks, Graham Manning and Tony Ferraro in September at the end of two-year special contracts.

Former supplier Michael Armstrong, Northcliffe, who was on a similar contract, was dropped in February when his contract expired.

Commenting on the DIAA product competition success capping a tumultuous year, Brownes’ managing director Tony Girgis said it was an interesting 12 months but they would stick to the strategy of being the lowest cost producer and the most agile and innovative in the State.

“The recent awards, on top of the last three years, with a total of 218 awards including 11 champions, two finalists and one grand champion in the AGDA (Australian Grand Dairy Awards) including best milk in Australia, is testimony to that,” Mr Girgis said.

“We have a number of new product innovations, some of which have been released in May and more to be released in September-October, that are leading the pack, thanks to a first class team of highly skilled and dedicated professionals.

“Our waste reduction strategy has seen us reduce water consumption by 90 million litres and seven million litres of milk in two years, and we are only half way along that journey.

“Our safety culture has improved in leaps and bounds, and not only have we reduced our LTIFR (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate) by 60 per cent, we are now well below the industry average.

“Similarly, our quality focus has delivered tremendous results in longer shelf life and culminated in a BRC (a global standard for food safety) audit score of ‘A’ last November.

“Our export market development strategy is starting to pay dividends through a highly focussed and targeted approach to countries and customers.

“I am truly excited about what this business has done and can do,” he said.

More than 40 accredited technical judges assessed 1200 products from across Australia on appearance, texture and flavour in more than 100 categories over three days in Victoria for the competition.

The judges awarded 180 gold medals and 781 silver medals.

Winners were announced at a recent gala dinner in Melbourne and invited to enter Dairy Australia’s Australian Grand Dairy Awards.