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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-29 Daily Xml
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Bio Gro

The Hon. B.R. HOOD (15:44): I rise today to recognise a remarkable South Australian success story, and that is Bio Gro, and to congratulate its managing director, Stephen Van Schaik, on being named one of this year's Timber Legends at the Green Triangle Timber Industry Awards held in Mount Gambier last Friday night.

This honour was well deserved. It recognises not only Stephen's leadership but the enduring vision of the Van Schaik family, a family that has shaped the forestry and organics industry across our state for nearly 50 years. The Bio Gro story began in the mid-seventies when Hans Van Schaik, Stephen's father, saw an opportunity where others saw waste. At a time when pine bark and sawdust was being discarded from local mills and forestry floors around Mount Gambier, Hans believed those by-products could be turned into something valuable. He began composting, experimenting and proving that industry residue could be reused for good. From that simple idea, a small earthmoving and residue recovery business grew into what we now know as Bio Gro, a national leader in organics recycling, composting and sustainable soil health solutions.

Bio Gro remains truly a family business, proudly run by Stephen and his wife, Heather, and two of their children, Emma and Liam, who now work alongside them continuing the Van Schaik family commitment to innovation, hard work and the environmental stewardship that began 50 years ago. Today, Bio Gro processes more than 300,000 tonnes of organic material every year through its facilities in South Australia and Victoria. What began in a shed in Mount Gambier has grown into a company that employs locals, supports regional economies and provides a model for circular economy practice right here in Australia. This success has never been accidental, it has been built on hard work, innovation and a willingness to keep moving forward.

Under Stephen's leadership, Bio Gro has invested in new technology and built purpose-made facilities that can handle massive volumes of organic material. The Mount Gambier site alone has two automated packaging lines capable of producing more than eight million bags of growing media each year. Their products are used in nurseries, vineyards and farms across the country, tailored to crop, climate and region, improving soil structure and returning life to the land.

Bio Gro's work is a perfect example of a truly circular economy within the forestry sector. The company takes what would otherwise be considered waste, such as pine bark, sawdust and organic residues from sawmills and forestry plantations, and turns them into high-quality compost and growing media, and then those products go straight back into forestry nurseries, helping to grow the next generation of plantation timber. In effect, the by-products of one harvest become the foundation of the next. It is a closed loop that conserves resources, cuts emissions and strengthens the long-term sustainability of our timber industry.

Few examples capture the full cycle of regional manufacturing, environmental stewardship and industry renewal as clearly as Bio Gro does. Bio Gro's vision is simple yet profound: to lead the way in sustainable ecological soil health solutions for the benefit of future generations. Its mission and values are grounded in ethical conduct, safe workplaces, environmental improvement, competence, collaboration, and a passion for community, for family and for change. These are not just words on a website, they are principles lived every day by the women and the men who work across Bio Gro's operations.

They have expanded carefully and strategically throughout Australia, acquiring new sites in Victoria, including their new Newbridge facility, which has a licensed capacity of up to 160,000 tonnes per year, and installing Australia's first decontamination pre-treatment line at Dandenong South, a major step towards processing quality and efficiency.

Bio Gro's message is a great one for regional businesses. I have spoken about this before: in our regions we innovate out of necessity, and that is something that Bio Gro does. I want to congratulate Stephen and Heather and Emma and Liam for the tremendous work they have done, for the people they employ and on the truly circular way in which they treat their product. It really is testament to what we can do in regional South Australia, and grow that to a national stage.

Again, Stephen, congratulations, mate, on your Timber Industry Legend Award. Well done on the work that you are doing. I hope that Bio Gro continues long into the future as another successful story from my hometown of Mount Gambier.