Salad days are here again
A Marion Bay family is turning waste into a winner, writes Elaine Reeves
Completely unadorned is how you must to enter the Daly Potato Co factory.
Into the handbag (which is left behind) go rings, watch, beads and earrings.
Shoes are replaced by gumboots, a white coat is buttoned up and every wisp of hair is tucked into one of those oh-so-flattering disposable caps.
Higher-tech precautions are also in play. The air in the rooms where potato products are prepared, cooked and packed have a positive airflow, that is the filtered air pushes out of the room rather that the outside air pushing in.
Never mind that once inside I don’t so much as lean over a tub of potato salad, let alone touch anything; such would be the damage to business and reputation were any foreign objects to be found in the readyto-eat food products that no precaution could be considered over the top.
At the very least, they give Susie Daly and her production manager Russell Crook a chance of sleeping easy at night, although in Susie’s case, the $1 million invested in equipping the factory at Sorell “certainly keeps you alive with nerves”.
The Daly family has been farming at Marion Bay since 1910. Thirty years ago Gerard and Susie planted their first potato crop of 10 bags.
Today, their waste stream is 500 tonnes a year; that is “waste” as in not conforming to visual and size specifications for sale in 1kg or 2kg bags.
In 2014, after gaining a contract to supply Woolworths supermarkets nationally with washed potatoes, Susie began looking for ways to use the potatoes deemed not pretty enough for that supply.
One solution was to begin making potato salads. Four varieties were trialled in Tasmanian Woolworths stores and also supplied to IGA.
In late 2016, production was moved to Sorell, where there is town water, which is not available at the farm.
And only since last November, the products started to be sold in Woolworths supermarkets in Victoria and New South Wales.
The 400g tubs of potato salad are best-seller Bacon & Dijon, Spring Onion & Garlic Aioli, Mild Curry and Smoked Chicken & Seeded Mustard. There also are packs of six roasted potatoes: Rosemary & Garlic and Spicy Harissa.
The pressure is on now to develop new products for winter, when salad sales trend down.
“We are lucky there are so many things you can do with potatoes – there are bakes, wedges, croquettes and mash,” said Susie.
In a couple of weeks Susie is off to Ireland to visit Mash Direct, another paddock-toplate family farm business, which sells prepared mash and more.
Twenty years ago, the Dalys employed six people. Now they have a staff of 45 over the farm, factory and the still. The other thought back in 2014 for a way of using potatoes was to make vodka the traditional way. (Grain is cheaper than potatoes and very little vodka is made from potatoes these days.)
Their Hellfire Vodka (named after Hellfire Bluff at Marion Bay) is doing well and a gin and limoncello have been added to the range. The Dalys’ daughter Ruby looks after Hellfire and their daughter Emma’s partner, Tom Blethman is the distiller. Their son Nathan works with his dad on the farm and Jacinta helps out when her day job allows.
Work starts early at the Sorell factory, because every day a refrigerated truck arrives at 1pm and all that day’s production must be on it. “There is no room for error, you really have to know what you are doing,” said Russell.
Preparation begins at 4am for mainland orders that will come in by 6am. The potatoes are handled by machines, but spring onions, which go into every salad, are prepared and chopped by hand – as many as 100kg a shift.
Everything, even the sultanas that go into the Mild Curry salad, has to be cooked and then cooled down – the cooling capacity of the factory is twice the cooking capacity as it takes longer.
Just about anything can be cooked and packed at the factory, and the Dalys are open to offers of processing product for others in a second shift. The only proviso is that they want to remain a gluten-free factory.