MSM Milling

Transforming Non-GM canola seeds from local farms into trusted oils and high protein stockfeeds.

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MSM Milling recognised at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Export Awards

MSM Milling has received a Highly Commended Award in the Agribusiness, Food and Beverages category of the 2019 NSW Premier’s Export Awards.

The Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW, Industry and Trade John Barilaro said the awards recognise the outstanding success of leading NSW businesses and the contribution they make to the state’s trade output.

“These businesses represent the very best NSW has to offer – from small family-owned businesses to listed corporations, they are making a tangible contribution not only to NSW but across Australia. Every exporter who is investing in growing their overseas markets is also helping to grow and support local communities,” Mr Barilaro said.

MSM Milling Director Peter Mac Smith received the award at a gala dinner in Sydney and told journalists it is a reflection of the dedication and hard work of the entire team at MSM Milling.

“Sales of our auzure 100% Australian Expeller Pressed Non-GM Canola Oil have been more than doubling every year, which is rewarding for us,” he said.

“It’s been a hard 24-36 months for everyone in our supply chain with the drought and the challenges it brings, so this award gives everyone the enthusiasm to keep going forward and growing,” he said.

Agribusiness, Food and Beverages_FinalistEsig_NSWEA19

auzure: Sydney Royal Fine Food Silver Medal Winner

MSM Milling has won a Sydney Royal Fine Food Show Silver Medal in recognition of the quality of its 100% Australian Non-GM Expeller Pressed auzure Canola Oil, in its first year at the prestigious event. More than 1,800 exhibits were judged across nine sections of the Fine Food Show in Sydney in September. The Oils category of the 2019 Sydney Royal Fine Food Show was highly contested, with judges noting the number of entries received in the section.

The judges noted auzure boasted ‘subtle toasted coconut with a clean finish on the palate’.

A spokesperson for the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW (RAS) says since its establishment in 1822, Sydney Royal Competitions set the benchmark for agricultural excellence that underpins Australia’s agricultural performance ensuring a viable and prosperous future for our rural communities.

auzure is sold across Australia and demanded around the world by consumers, quick service restaurants and food manufacturers for its quality, health attributes and versatility. The silver medal will be added to labels and food service packaging in recognition of the win.

$5.38m bioenergy investment delivers Australia’s first low carbon Canola Oil

The Orange-region oilseed crushing, refining and packaging company MSM Milling has commissioned a multi-million dollar cornerstone project for the Australian food processing industry, making it the country’s first low carbon canola oil producer.

The state-of-the-art $5.38 million biomass-fuelled boiler was funded by the 100% Australian family owned company, in conjunction with a $2-million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), under the Advancing Renewables Program.

The project involved the installation of a 4.88MW boiler, which is fuelled by locally sourced renewable wood waste, forestry thinnings, offcuts and sawmill by-products, to generate the steam needed for the canola processing operation. The biomass boiler replaces three LPG boilers, with the vast majority of heat and steam requirements now coming from renewables.

MSM Milling Director, Bob Mac Smith, says the company’s commitment to sustainability and adoption of renewable energy, helps ensure the future of the business, and is in line with consumers’ demands for environmentally friendly products, production, supply chains and businesses.

“We’re proud that MSM Milling is one of the country’s first large scale food manufacturers to make the switch to bioenergy. The boiler is delivering a 70-per-cent reduction in our thermal energy costs, reducing greenhouse emissions, fossil fuel energy use and depletion, while increasing NSW’s renewable energy generation.

“The investment is also delivering domestic and international consumers the low carbon food products they’re demanding. Our 100% Australian expeller pressed Non-GM auzure Canola Oil is now officially a low carbon food product.

“In real terms, our switch from LPG to biomass will result in net emissions reductions of more than 80,000-tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents during the life of the project. It means we’re removing the Co2e of 1,500 cars from the road each year, Mr Mac Smith said.

The CEO of ARENA, Darren Miller, says the project is helping to showcase the growing benefits of bioenergy uptake in Australia’s energy mix.

“MSM Milling is one of the first examples of a large Australian agricultural industry company reducing its costs and environmental impact by using biomass for thermal energy. It’s something ARENA is proud to have supported and we see significant potential for the project to be replicated elsewhere in the industrial sector,” he said.

MSM Milling partnered with boiler manufacturer Justsen as well as Uniquip Engineering, carbon energy expert Ndevr Environmental and several local industry experts for the project, documenting the process at several bioenergy conferences across Australia to showcase the development. The fuel switch project showcases the early adoption of such technology in Australia and several other Australian companies have since signed contracts with the boiler manufacturer to enable the uptake of bioenergy.

Profile: Mrs Marianne Mac Smith

Meet the doting, hard working mother of MSM Milling Directors Bob and Pete Mac Smith. Join her for a trip down memory lane as she recalls her early days in New Zealand as well as some of the pivotal events in the development of a canola crushing business on the family farm, right through to her sons joining the Chairman of the Manildra Group Dick Honan to establish and develop MSM (Mac Smith Manildra) Milling.

Marianne Mac Smith’s introduction to factory life was as a primary school student in New Zealand during World War II. Every Friday afternoon straight after school, and each Saturday morning, she and her sister Suzanne had to go to work at the nearby Wattie’s cannery in Hastings, on the East Coast of the North Island. It was World War II and the wages Marianne and Suzanne earned were donated to the Red Cross for the war effort.

“Dad was overseas during the war years. Mum and my grandmother worked in Wattie’s canneries, which had the contract to make all the tinned food for the troops in the Air Force, Army and Navy during the war. I remember every shift I had to stand in front of a great big mincer and my job was to throw the carrots into the mincer to be diced up to go into the stew. My sister, who couldn’t bear touching raw meat, had to throw the meat into a similar mincer,” she recalls, chuckling.

It was Marianne’s early foray in food production, manufacturing and factory life, as well as assisting Red Cross; a charity she’s committed many years of her life to, both in New Zealand and Australia.

Little did a young Marianne know that many, many, years later, her sons would establish their own manufacturing plant in a different country, crushing the canola they grew on the family farm.

She moved to the farm, Little Boree, Cudal, a stone’s throw from the thriving regional city of Orange, NSW, in February 1956. Her new husband, Lance, was born at Little Boree. She’d met him in the spring of 1954. It was a chance meeting at the Parkes aerodrome as Lance travelled from Little Boree to meet his sister, Felicity, and her new New Zealand friend, Marianne, as they flew into the Central West on a small Heron aeroplane after enjoying the Picnic Race circuit in the Riverina.

“He came over to meet the plane. I came and stayed here at Boree, and the rest is history, as they say. I’ve lived much more of my life in Australia than I lived in New Zealand, but I still feel like a New Zealander!”

It didn’t take long for the New Zealand-born lass to be adopted by the wider Cudal district.

“I very quickly made a lot of friends. I was invited to join the Tuesday Tennis Group, which has been going for 60 or 70 years I think. So I played tennis on a Tuesday for a long, long time and everyone was very, very kind.  I had four children, Mary, Bob, Rachel and Peter. Once the kids started school, I met a lot of other people. I’ve always said you’ve only got your children on borrowed time.  But I’ve been extremely lucky, because they’ve all come back to the district.”

Daughter Mary returned to the farm to work with her father on the property. Sons Bob and Pete farmed too, but in 1990, with low commodity prices (wheat was attracting a measly $90/tonne) and interest rates hovering around 18%, their second ‘payment’ for wheat they’d delivered to the Wheat Board was actually a bill, rather than a payment. They needed a Plan B.

“Canola had been working agronomically for the boys for a number of years. They were getting $90/tonne for wheat while canola was paying between $250 and $300 a tonne. The gross margin to grow canola over wheat was double. The Australian diet was changing and takeaway shops needed low saturated oils to cook with. It made sense that they explore crushing the seed on farm and selling the oil and meal. So that’s what they did.”

“Australian Country Canola was established in 1991. Within 12 months, the boys found the equipment they needed to establish a crushing plant here at home. They refurbished it and set it up, all while continuing to run the family farm. My youngest daughter Rachel returned from Europe and quickly became part of the business. It was now a real family business.”

Marianne recalls the hours before the launch of the retail oil at the inaugural Orange FOOD Affair one Sunday in early 1992. The stress in the small mill was palpable.

“By about 2pm on the Saturday, the boys were still trying to extract the oil. They tried everything during the ensuing 10 hours, but at midnight they still had no oil. Eventually they suggested trying another batch of canola seed. Bob went to get some from a silo on the farm and as he started filling a 44-gallon drum with seed, it started raining. It was the greatest fluke. That damp seed produced oil straight away. It was unbelievable and the relief when we at least had about five -dozen bottles to take to market was something else!

“They sold out and everything was all right!”

In that first year of operation, Australian Country Canola processed approximately 300-tonnes of canola. The business grew steadily, supporting local farmers and selling oil to retailers and food manufacturers. It was a full family operation, with everyone involved in some way.

“In those days, we had to manually apply the labels; remove them from the sheet and smooth them down the bottles. I labelled that many bottles that I had to give up Tuesday morning tennis because when the ball hit the tennis racket, my thumb would give way because it had no strength left in it.

“The boys knew they had a tough decision to make about the future: expand on the farm or start from scratch on a new site and build a new stand-alone plant. They were very fortunate when Dick Honan, the owner of the Manildra Group, visited them. He came here and told the boys he wanted to expand into the oil business and left them all his telephone and facsimile numbers and told them to get in touch if they needed a hand, or a chat. They had some tough decisions to make, but Lance and I supported them 100%. Lance always told them: ‘If that’s what you want to do, do it.’ He never stopped them trying anything.

“In 2005, Bob and Pete formed a joint venture with the Dick and the Honan Family. The boys did so much research to find the best technology to use in their new plant. They wanted to think ahead of the game to make sure they had the most sophisticated control systems in the automated plant. They started building on a new site in Manildra in 2006 and the new business – MSM Milling – started producing oil in April 2007.

“One of the nice things is that I was able to take Lance over to the mill shortly before he died. It so was great because he was so thrilled to see the progress. Dick Honan happened to be there that day and he told us that he was so blown away that the boys got the business running in 18 months, where he’d expected it to take 10 years.

“That’s what I like so much about Dick. He’s got the same goal, vision, passion and culture as Bob and Pete.  He’s been a great mentor and is a very empowering person. While there have been challenges in the world of commodities over the years, I think it’s a complementary partnership,” she said.

Mrs Mac Smith has watched MSM Milling steadily expand as her sons and the Honan family Continually re-invest in the business. Always the first on site to inspect the progress of a new packing plant, a new stockfeed feed mill and more recently a bio-mass boiler to help cut energy costs and keep the operation financial sustainable.

She launched the company’s retail auzure oil in 2017 in the Molong SPAR Supermarket she’s shopped in for many years, telling reporters how much joy and pleasure it gave her to see it on supermarket shelves.

“I get a great kick out of it. I feel very proud of what they have done,” she said.

Marianne has also notched up some notable achievements of her own in recent years, with the presentation of a Gilt Rosette to mark 60 years of service to the Red Cross. Unofficially, that service started some years prior as a small child during War World II in a cannery in New Zealand. But she’s not one for big noting. She wouldn’t mention that she was also crowned Cudal’s Citizen of the Year in 1956, or that she’s held multiple positions on several community groups including Meals on Wheels, Can Assist, Bushfire Brigades, P and C’s, the Children’s’ Medical Research Foundation or that she organised the afternoon tea for the Queens Diamond Jubilee at the Cabonne Food, Wine and Cultural Centre.

Mrs Mac Smith is not one to sit still for too long, even after knee replacements. Marianne has replaced Tuesday morning tennis with aqua aerobics, at nearby Molong, a few mornings a week. But there’s no aqua on Tuesday mornings, because Tuesday mornings are spent in the kitchen baking her famous Ginger Bread with auzure Canola Oil and Healthy Baker Flour, ready to be delivered warm to her sons and the rest of the crew at nearby MSM Milling for smoko.

Marianne Mac Smith’s Ginger Bread

1 C Brown Sugar
2 C Healthy Baker Self-raising Flour
1 Dessertspoon Ground Ginger
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Mixed Spice
1/4C auzure Canola Oil
2 eggs, beaten
1 C Milk
1C Golden Syrup

Method

Heat oven to 180 degrees

In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients together. Add eggs and milk.

Bring auzure Canola Oil and golden syrup to the boil in a small saucepan, before mixing into the batter.

Cook for 45 minutes at 180 degrees.

Partnership helps provide 51 million meals to Aussies in need

Despite some of the toughest drought conditions on record, Manildra Group and MSM Milling continue to help Foodbank to provide 51 million meals to Australians in need through flour, sugar and oil donations as part of Foodbank’s vital collaborative supply program.

Since 2004, Manildra Group has provided flour to manufacture pasta with Rinoldi as part of the country’s first program of its kind. From 2009, MSM Milling has provided canola oil donations to the production of Leggo’s Napoletana Pasta Sauce in a joint initiative with Simplot and its ingredient suppliers.

Foodbank Australia General Manager National Supply Chain, Michael Davidson, said the organisation is incredibly grateful for the ongoing support and partnership with both Manildra Group and MSM Milling.

“With more than 40% of Foodbank’s total food relief volume helping regional and remote communities and the tough season at hand, the involvement of these two leading regionally based manufacturing companies is appreciated and needed more than ever to help communities and vulnerable Australians, including here in their own backyard, in Orange and regional NSW.

Manildra Group and MSM Milling source the wheat and canola from the local area, handle the milling and consolidation locally and help people in the local area with the finished products from the program distributed via our network of front line charities,” he said.

In 2017 the Manildra Group collectively donated 22,400 meals to Foodbank from product donations across its range, and more than 5 million serves from its involvement in the two collaborative supply programs, providing a significant social return on investment of more than $8.2 million last year alone.

Manildra Group’s Manildra Flour Mill Production Manager, Tony Fitzpatrick said Manildra Group is proud to continue donating locally grown and produced flour and sugar to this vital program.

“With our national partnership with Foodbank now in its 14th year, the Honan family and Manildra Group team are committed to providing key staple foods to vulnerable Australians in need. Being part of an innovative program like this really demonstrates what can be achieved when suppliers and food manufacturers come together for the collective benefits of our communities,” said Mr Brunner.

MSM Milling’s Site Manager James Karbowiak, says MSM Milling’s involvement in the Foodbank Collaborative Supply Program is a perfect fit for the company to directly assist people needing hunger relief.

“Every year MSM Milling proudly donates thousands of litres of canola oil to this valuable program to ensure such a versatile pantry staple is made available to those who most need it. We’re a family business and the directors and the team are all proud and humbled to donate oil to the program and see the difference it makes to everyday Australians. On occasions I volunteer my personal time to assist at Foodcare Orange and it’s wonderful to see our products going some way to alleviate food insecurity in our local communities.” he said.

E-commerce sales bring the gold for canola exporter

NSW exporter MSM Milling is boosting its exports of canola oil into China by tapping into the lucrative e-commerce market.

The Orange-based canola crushing, refining and packing business has been exporting oil to China for eight years but in 2017 strategically moved to sell its retail and food service brand to Chinese consumers via China’s largest cross border e-commerce retailer, Kaola.

Minister for Primary Industries and Trade and Industry, Niall Blair visited the former NSW Exporter of the Year today following his return from a successful trade mission to China earlier this month.
Mr Blair said it’s great to see a successful NSW exporter like MSM Milling taking advantage of new opportunities in its overseas markets.

“Recently, MSM participated in the world’s largest online shopping event, Singles Day, achieving in excess of a 3000 per cent increase on their sales of the previous year,” Mr Blair said.

“E-commerce is changing the way NSW producers can get their products to the world.

“It’s proof that Chinese consumers can’t get enough of our quality, sustainable products and we are more than happy to deliver the best.

“During my visit to Shanghai I was very impressed by the potential for NSW companies to sell their top quality products through e-commerce platforms into a massive, expanding market of Chinese consumers.”

Mr Blair toured the oilseed plant to witness new season canola seed being delivered, pressed and packed into value added oil products.

The 100 per cent family-owned business has been exporting to bulk, food service and more recently, retail customers throughout 15 international markets for 12 years.

MSM Milling Director, Peter Mac Smith said the company chose e-commerce as a means of directly reaching consumers who use online shopping to source quality imported food products for their families.

“Chinese consumers trust e-commerce platforms to sell verified, safe and healthy products like our wholly Australian made auzure canola oil,” Mr Mac Smith said.

“The sheer reach of platforms like Kaola ensures Chinese consumers will have our product within hours of placing their order online.”