Cream rises to top
Family firm beats odds
BULLA Dairy Foods has gone from strength to strength since its humble beginnings in 1910 when Thomas Sloan produced thickened cream in a suburban backyard.
“It was basically started out of a shed,” said chief Allan Hood.
Mr Sloan would thicken cream for the business, then called the Bulla Cream Company, by standing open cans in coppers fired by wood.
The young entrepreneur had milk and cream delivered by horse and cart from a dairy farm in Bulla, northwest of Melbourne, that was managed by his brother, William.
Six generations and almost 107 years later, the same three families own the business and have no intention of selling, despite many generous offers.
Another thing that has not changed is the original cream recipe.
“That’s locked in a vault somewhere,” Mr Hood says.
Still a relatively small player, using about 100 million litres of milk every year – less than 2 per cent of the milk pool from the biggest dairy-producing state, Victoria – Bulla has thrived in the face of intense competition from big international players and cost-conscious dairy processors and grocers.
Bulla stuck to what it knew best, using 100 per cent fresh milk and cream – a method on which it prides itself.
Today it has more than 700 staff at five domestic manufacturing sites and seven staff in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore to bolster export markets.
Mr Hood said the biggest challenge in the near term would be a lack of local milk supplies as farmers felt the pinch from last year’s farmgate crisis and clawback by major processors Murray Goulburn Co-operative and Fonterra.
Mr Hood said Bulla’s Unfakeable advertising campaign, promoting its products as made from 100 per cent milk and cream, had boosted sales.
“We’ve got a great story to tell and we just have to tell it,” he said.