P
arwan Valley Mushrooms is a joint venture owned by Mecrus and Perfection Fresh Australia. Mecrus is an asset management, contract maintenance company with expertise in energy usage and water technology. This venture into mushrooms signals their first steps branching out into horticulture. Perfection Fresh is the country’s second largest producer and marketer of fresh fruit and vegetables supplying retailers in Australia. The mushrooms produced at Parwan represent a new category of own produce for the company.
Parwan Valley Mushrooms gives its joint owners a mushroom producing facility of 12 growing rooms of 820 m2 with four sets of shelving each, that entered full production in mid-2012. There are plans to double the capacity when the time is ripe. The opening of the company was attended by representatives of the Coles supermarket chain and a representative of the Australian Minister of Agriculture. Coles committed to purchase the majority of mushrooms produced by Parwan Valley from Perfection Fresh. Supplying mushrooms in combination with other fruit and vegetable produce eases the path to entering the mushroom market. Australia currently numbers a population of around 23 million, including a large immigrant demo- graphic of Asian origin. It’s reasonable to assume that this fact accounts for mushroom consump- tion per capita of 3.1 kg. It is widely known that very effective marketing campaigns are deployed in Australia to boost mushroom consumption. Competition does exist between production companies, but is balanced. Demand varies seasonally; there are occasional times of over-production, but also weeks with mushroom shortages.
From l to r.: Tim Adlington, general manager, Promod Uduwela, harvest manager and head grower Munya Nyanhanda.
Kaleidoscope of backgrounds Parwan Valley Mushrooms is one of the 48 mushroom growing companies in Australia that jointly produce 1200 tonnes of mushroom weekly. The region Parwan is established in occa- sionally suffers from drought, and some water tanks at the facility are kept as a backup, and for fire safety reasons.
Munya notices improvements in yield and quality.
It is a young company with many young employees with a kaleidoscope of backgrounds. The majority of employees originate from Sou- th-East Asia, particularly Vietnam. There is also a large labour contingent from Laos, Cambodia, Korea, China, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Canada and, of course, Australia. The management team is currently organising internal training under the supervision of CEO Tim Adlington, who gained wide industry experience working for various companies in his native Canada. For 10 years he held the role of general manager at Campbell Soup Canada, and later President of Leaver Mushrooms, as well as Chief Operating Officer for Moneys Mushrooms. The grower in charge, Munya Nyanhanda, hails from Zimbabwe and built up a wealth of previous experience working in New Zealand. Munya works with in combination with cross trained growers, Justin, Promod and Will who also func- tion in other capacities on the farm. They operate a shift duty system at weekends and during holidays so the company is not dependent on the knowledge and skill of just a single grower. Together with Tim, and picking manager Promod Uduwela from Sri Lanka, they train their team to become experienced growers and pickers able to supply superior quality produce to the strong market player Perfection Fresh.
Superior quality
The Parwan Valley Mushrooms facility was constructed by Christiaens Group of the Nether-
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