Maxum Foods' growth award recognises dairy ingredient ingenuity

Young Australian dairy ingredients company, Maxum Foods, is helping nurture the next generation of milkers for NZ’s 6.6 million head dairy herd.

Maxum’s infant livestock milk replacer range, MaxCare, is proving a big hit with NZ dairy farmers, yet it was only launched across the Tasman early this year.

Already the company sells more of its nutritional powder for dairy calves in NZ than its total sales back at home.

“It’s a bit like selling ice to Eskimos, but we’ve had an unbelievable response in NZ,” said chief executive officer, Ben Woodhouse.

“It’s very rewarding. We’ve put a lot of effort developing these products so they’re easy to use and right for the market, and promoting to them accordingly.” 

Maxum established 15 years ago as a dairy food ingredients supplier and custom powder blender for the baking and food processing sector, later branching into livestock nutrition lines.

Four years ago it developed its market leading milk replacer range, which in 2017-18 contributed solidly to the company’s 40 per cent revenue jump to $150 million.

In fact, Maxum Foods has just been named business services growth company of the year at the Australian Growth Company Awards.

The awards celebrate excellence in the mid-market business sector, specifically recognising businesses achieving high rates of sustainable growth, innovation, integrity and contribution to community.

Founded in Brisbane by Mr Woodhouse and Dustin Boughton, Maxum began with five customers selling about 600 tonnes of dairy food product, including 25-kilogram blocks butter, bulk cheese and powder, in their first year.

It now boasts 38 staff sourcing product globally to service almost 1000 customers in Australia, New Zealand and some other spot offshore opportunity markets.

Maxum’s food and health product ingredients division supplies mostly small and mid-sized food companies producing products ranging from croissants and biscuits to ice cream.

Its customer roll call includes names such as Sanitarium, Peters, Weis, Kurrajong Kitchen and Byron Bay Cookies.

The company also provides technical support to help customers use the most functional and cost effective dairy ingredients for their specific processing applications.

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Milk powder product blends for food and livestock formula markets are processed to fit specific end user requirements at a 24,000t/year capacity plant in Melbourne.

Maxum sources about two thirds of its dairy ingredients from Australian processors, but depending on market trends and price also draws from a big network of suppliers in Europe, North America and NZ.

Overall, it has been regularly achieving 30pc year-on-year growth, with plenty of scope for more in the edible food and stockfeed markets, according to Mr Woodhouse.

In 2017-18 Maxum handled 35,000t of dairy product, including almost 10,000t of specially blended powder formula for calves, lambs, piglets and kids.

That represented more than 40pc of the Australian market for livestock milk replacer products and about 10pc share of the edible food ingredients market.

“We’re certainly celebrating our victories, but we can still see huge opportunities to grow in the future,” Mr Woodhouse said.

“The popularity of our MaxCare products in NZ has been pretty exciting.

“We’re definitely looking at selling into more animal nutrition markets outside Australia and NZ – although we want to be sure to have established service networks in place first.”

Mr Woodhouse said the dairy heifer market was particularly attractive because farmers recognised investing in early stage nutrition and diet were rewarded better productivity from their mature milkers.

However, not all potential near Asian export markets were yet seeking, or could afford, the sort of premium lines made by Maxum.

Its focus on edible food markets would continue to be Australia and NZ, where there was still plenty of growth potential to be tapped.

He and Mr Boughton, and later partner David Russell, started Maxum after identifying a gap in the dairy supply chain to provide a timely, customer-specific sourcing service to food manufacturers.

They realised many businesses were forced to deal direct with big volume suppliers while not having the storage space or need for such big quantities.

Nor did they have the time or ability to shop around for ingredients and back up technical support.

“Small to medium-sized food manufacturers usually order dairy ingredients for delivery the next day, but some multinationals and even distributors were slow to move to accommodate these customers,” Mr Woodhouse said.

“We could see they were missing a big niche and were letting customers down.”

Maxum was born, offering a new level of service to help customers, and also helping the big suppliers, too.

“We’re fortunate many of our staff have been with us for a long time and contributed significantly to our growth,” he said.

“We believe in investing in promoting a really positive culture and `never give up’ attitude which has allowed us to grow from nothing back in 2003 to where we are today.”