PRODUCERS TAKE GREENS TO WORLD

IF YOU’VE ever ordered lettuce on your Subway sandwich, chances are it came from the farms of Story Fresh.

The major leafy vegetable grower, owned by Geoffrey and Anne Story, took out the top gong at the Heritage Bank Business Excellence Awards on Saturday night by winning Regional Business of the Year.

With properties in Cambooya, Grantham and Clifton, the family-run company supplies to major food outlets such as Subway and Hungry Jacks, as well as hospitality businesses across Australia.

Now the business will possibly explore the international market in the coming year, which will include using Wellcamp airport for export.

Mr Story said the business is a year-round operation, an incredible achievement considering all properties were within an hour of each other.

“The number one crop is iceberg lettuce (and) we still do that today as well as cos lettuce,” he said.

“We’ve added baby leaves like spinach, rocket and all the red and green leaves. It’s all fresh, but we do that 52 weeks a year.

“We would do about 4 million kilograms of shredded lettuce and carrot products, and then we do another million kilograms of the baby leaves.

“We make close to a million serves of product a day.”

On top of growing the produce, Story Fresh’s 100 employees also run a full in-house processing operation, meaning the product leaves the property ready for consumption.

“We cut them, wash, dry and make them ready to eat,” Mr Story said.

“There’s a massive process involved, so there’s a whole range of innovative things we do to get that produce ready.”

While the domestic market is Story Fresh’s main focus, , Mr Story said the company was investigating international export, including through Wellcamp airport.

“We see a lot of potential in the future to use Wellcamp, but we’re still early in building the export business,” he said.

“We’ve been reconfiguring our capacity and capability so we can do more export than we currently are.

“There’s a lot of demand for Australian produce, it’s high quality and there’s a strong focus on food safety.”

Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce CEO Jo Sheppard said the organisation’s keynote event of the year was one of the biggest on record, with more than 90 businesses nominating for the awards.

“There’s a great selection of winners, because there are big and small businesses in the awards,” she said.

“I’m really impressed with the diversity of the winners.

“We had quite a lot of nominations this year –

definitely an increase from last year and the dinner sold out at 400 tickets.”

PHOTO: NEV MADSEN BIG WIN: Celebrating their Best Regional Business award are (from left) Nathan, Geoffrey, Anne and Tiffany Story from Story Fresh at the Heritage Bank Business Excellence Awards.

PHOTOS: NEV MADSEN John Chapman (Big Dog Security) and Natasha Lynch at the Heritage Bank Business Excellence Awards at the Empire Theatre.

BIG NIGHT: Jo Sheppard, CEO Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce and Nick Barker from Hutchinson Builders at the Heritage Bank Business Excellence Awards.

Alex, Louis, Kim and Tessa Metcalf from Beauaraba Living at the Heritage Bank Business Excellence Awards at the Empire Theatre.

The Create Financial Solutions Toowoomba team (from left) Paige McDonald, Indeana Payne, Colleen Geach, Martin Geach, Leanne McDonald, Karl Saint, Meryl Frizzell, Susan Ellevsen and Simon Carrie.

April Lancaster-Smith and Michelle Simon-Brown.

Kyla White and Dianne Owers from Toowoomba Portable Toilets with Sherry McDowell.