NAB News

For national food grower Fresh Select, vegetables are big business.

Headquartered in Melbourne’s Werribee South region, deemed the ‘salad bowl of Victoria,’ Fresh Select is one of the largest lettuce and brassica farmers in Australia.

“I love growing food, I love cooking with food. Vegetables are so interesting, there’s a lot of different varieties,” said Fresh Select CEO, John Said.

But it’s not just what ends up on your plate that’s important to John Said.

The Said family businesses have long been focused on using sustainable farming techniques to positively impact people’s health by providing quality produce.

The Melbourne-based farming company grows broccoli, cauliflower, lettuces, cabbages and brussels sprouts, distributing a total of 26 product types to local and overseas markets, including Coles in Australia.

Fresh Select CEO John Said . Fresh Select is one of the largest lettuce and brassica farmers in Australia.

Sustainability comes naturally

As a vertically integrated company, Fresh Select has been able to drive sustainability from paddock to plate.

“Vertically integrated means that we take a seed, from the very beginning of a plant cycle, all the way through to what the consumer needs. We’ve gone from working our fields quite heavily to a minimum till program, which means far less impact on our soils.”

“There is an expectation by most multinational companies, our retailers and so on, that we aim for a decarbonised model and a reduction in our emissions, and we’re on our way to meeting that expectation.”

Green is good

Fresh Select’s motivation for sustainability started 25 years ago, with the purchase of an electrical forklift.

“We bought our first electric forklift 25 years ago. On this site (in Werribee) there are seven of them, and each time we renew the fleet we add one or two.”

As the business has grown, so too did the unsustainable electricity bills. This led to John and the team installing solar panels at the farm as a power source. The business now has one of the largest installations of solar panels in Australia.

“Sustainability was something that we kind of didn’t realise back then, that we were being sustainable. We did it because it felt good to us, and to this day sustainability still feels really good to us.”

John agrees that it is possible to decarbonise and grow productivity at the same time, to strive for a more sustainable future in horticulture, but emphasises that sustainability also means being viable for the business.

“The sustainability solutions Fresh Select have put in place are commercially viable and make sense at the bottom line,” he said.

John said that Fresh Select’s journey to sustainability, like any business, is ongoing and has not been without its challenges too.

“We’re learning and we’re on our way to net zero. The technology needed is not there yet, some barriers remain in terms of what’s technically possible today.”

In the family

The business was founded 30 years ago by the Said and Ballan families.

Being a multigenerational family business is very important to John as CEO and has enabled the businesses’ vision for sustainability.

The War on Waste

Working in collaboration with the CSIRO, Fresh Select developed Nutri V, a vegetable power product that aims to help people get their recommended daily serving of vegetables and help reduce food waste from vegetables not used for retail distribution.

“For example, if around ten broccoli seeds are planted, maybe seven or eight of them will make it to the supermarket, and that other two or three will come to NutriV.”

Olivia said dehydrating the vegetables gives it a longer shelf life and versatility of use.

“Around 20 to 30 per cent of what is planted does not get harvested. NutriV take that produce, re-divert it, and repurpose it for other ways, to consume,” Nutri V Marketing Manager Olivia said.

“Around 94 per cent of Australians don’t eat enough vegetables, and they’re not getting their five serves a day. So we take the produce that’s left on farm, and we repurpose it into products that help consumers eat more vegetables.

“Instead of  being in your fridge for five to six days, it can be in your shelf or cupboard for up to 12 months,” she said.

“All the fibre and all the nutrients remain, they’re just more compact in our process. Just seven grams of our vegetable powder is equivalent to approximately 75 grams of vegetables, which is a serve of vegetables.

The vision for Nutri V is to see it expanded across all farming networks in Australia.

“This model is expandable across other farms, other regions, and other networks. If our farming network experiences farm loss, then we know a lot of other farms do too,” Olivia said.

“We want to replicate this model across other networks so that farmers become more viable and recoup some of their resources.”

NAB’s role – solar panel journey

Each step of the way, NAB has provided banking solutions to support Fresh Select in its use of sustainable farming techniques.

NAB Agribusiness Bankers Caroline Mathieson and Tom Harvey provided Fresh Select with a NAB Green Finance for Equipment loan to help fund the installation of solar panels on the farm.

“Working with Fresh Select to make sure that those products are not only reducing their carbon footprint but helping them from a cost efficiency perspective has been really important,” Tom said.

“A good example of that is the solar panel project they put in place. That’s reducing their electricity costs and provides them with a commercial benefit as well as reducing their carbon footprint.”

John said NAB has been instrumental in coming up with different packages that suit the business’s pursuit towards sustainability.

“I remember when we put our first solar installation in, back then we even got a discounted rate through the NAB green loan, because we were installing a renewable energy concept,” he said.

“We’ve built some amazing relationships with our bankers. The fact that they understand not just the industry, but our business deeply, is hugely important to us.”

“If we didn’t have a relationship with the bank, I daresay we wouldn’t be able to do what we do today. So I view the relationship with our bank as very important.”

Earlier this year, NAB and the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation announced a $300 million program to back discounted interest rates for eligible business borrowers to invest in green vehicles and equipment and for eligible agribusinesses and farmers to reduce the emissions of their operations.