South-East Businesses

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (14:33): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Can the minister please update the council on his recent South-East visit to meet with local businesses to discuss their export and investment opportunities?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:34): I thank the honourable member for his ongoing interest in regional South Australia. I was last week in the South-East and in particular visited Mount Gambier, the home of my colleague and good friend the Hon. Rob Lucas.

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The honourable Leader of the Opposition!

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: You drive past places often and you look at the building and you never have a chance to go in it. So I went past the Kraft factory, now the Mondelez factory, which makes Philadelphia cream cheese—something I think that nearly everybody at some time has a packet of in their fridge, and probably most people in this chamber would have some there today.

Interestingly, the factory has been operating for some 40 years. The facility operates 24 hours a day, five to six days a week, and employs 100 staff. It's interesting that they have a current production of some 15,000 tonnes of products. While we're all familiar with the Philadelphia cream cheese brand, there's a whole range of other products that they're looking to market and promote. Their production—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: They have the capacity to go to 40,000 tonnes. As you understand, Mr President—the members opposite might like to listen in silence—that underpins investment in more dairies, underpins investment in regional South Australia. Mr President, it was a pleasure to meet with Mr Mohamed Shalaby, who is the director for Australia and New Zealand.

It was a real pleasure to have a look around their facility, look at the plans they have to expand and at the plans they have to look for export markets, especially into Asia. They're delighted that we obviously have Xiao Ya Wei in the Shanghai office and Sally Townsend in the Tokyo office—an opportunity for those people to support this great South Australian institution in Mount Gambier.

Of course, we expect there will be some opportunities with the Houston office opening, and later in the year we'll have personnel on the ground in Dubai. We think there will also be some opportunities there. It was a real pleasure to see a business that had been established for 40 years, the hardworking people that run that business and the pride with which they produce the quality products that they do. I look forward to seeing that grow.

While I was also in Mount Gambier, I quickly called in to de Bruin Engineering to have a look at the business where they manufacture the seed destructors. I met with Jud Wheatley, general manager, and director, Scott de Bruin. The seed destructor is interesting, Mr President, in light of the context of the discussions we had in this place last year around GM technology. The Hon. Mark Parnell talked about resistance to Roundup and glyphosate, globally and in Australia. The seed destructor destroys seeds as they pass out the back of a harvester. It's technology that was developed in Western Australia.

The de Bruin Group have the manufacturing rights and they are quite excited. They are getting a lot of interest from the US, from Europe and the UK. They have tripled their workforce in the last 12 months and are particularly excited with the opportunity of us opening an office in the US, because of course the grain industry in the US is much, much bigger than we have here. The seed destruction technology—they're doing some trials with some of the companies in the US over the next couple of years, and I am sure that I'll be able to come back and to the chamber about some exciting developments with the seed destructor manufacture and the workforce growing in Mount Gambier with de Bruin Engineering.

The PRESIDENT: Supplementary question, the Hon. Ms Bourke.