CQ mungbean company links farmers with Asia

Instead of selling a few thousand tonnes of mungbeans every year to a third party in Australia, they now have a turnover of up to $20 million when there's a bumper crop.

Now operating as the Australian Mungbean Company, the Whites have directed their focus on introducing systems which allows them to value add and export mungbeans through their own export company, cutting out the middle man.

"It's a whole different beastie to when we bought it where everything was loaded by hand for the first couple of years, bag by bag," Mrs White said.

A former agronomist with the department of agriculture and fisheries, Mr White said he decided to change careers "to see what was on the other side of the fence".

"I was familiar with production. I was involved with the growing of the mungbeans as an agronomist and plant breeder, but once they were harvested the trail stopped and I didn't know where things went from there," he said.

"An opportunity came up in the private sector looking at the processing and marketing and I took up that opportunity and left the department."

In 2006, the business processed only a few thousand tonnes of mungbeans a year, selling them to Australian based exporters to onsell overseas.

"Back in those days, India was probably the biggest buyer of Australian mungbeans, but things have changed a little bit," Mr White said.

"We've now got access to China as a result of the China free trade agreement of 2018. Without the trade tariffs, our mung beans are now competitive.

"Initially, we used a middle man, but then we looked to value add...so we now buy off the farmers and process the mungbeans that we sell direct through our export company."

Mr White said exports to China vary from year to year, but China would take between 60 to 80 per cent of the Australian mungbean crop.

As well as using sprouted mung beans in hot pot soups, Asian consumers eat sprouted mungbeans and make them into bean shakes. Mung bean flour is also used to make vermicelli noodles.

Mr White said China would probably account for 50 to 60 per cent of their company's production.

"But we have deliberately diversified and put effort into developing other Asian markets," he said.

With a dedicated full-time team of seven staff, the Whites source most of their mung beans from about 120 growers, mainly in Central Queensland with a small amount coming from the Burdekin.

Mr White said as it was a dryland summer crop tonnages each year were subject to the vagaries of the weather.

"But it would probably vary between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of mungbean each year," he said.

"Mung beans are worth between $1100 to $1300 a tonne to the farmer. If it's a 10,000 tonne year, we have a $12 million to $13 million annual turnover - if it's a big year, it's probably closer to $20 million."

With a degree in applied science from UQ Gatton and a masters in plant physiology from Adelaide University, the former agronomist said the weather was what made a good mungbean.

Mr White said planting into a profile of moisture and following a recipe of good weed control also helped, but it was really all about the weather.

"The buyers are looking for mungbeans which are reasonably large in size," he said.

"Even though mung beans are oval, the Chinese market prefers a rounder shape rather than an oblong shape."

Mrs White, who also holds a degree in applied science from UQ Gatton, said mungbeans of an even colour without wrinkles were also important to the buyer, who assessed products visually.

"It's extraordinarily nuanced," she said.

"Some markets want this quality of mung bean and will accept that at the right price and see value for money in that while other people won't accept it."

At a number of different sites around Biloela, the Whites have about 70 silos so every farmer's crop is kept segregated in its own storage silo.

"We've been able to develop systems where our buyers now know that when we sell them mungbeans they will be able to basically see what quality they are going to get before they buy them," Mr White said.

"Each crop has a unique identifier so we can track and trace right to the paddock every single bag of mungbeans that goes overseas.

"And when we've cleaned them and they're in bags and loaded in containers in real time, our buyers will get photos of the container and the product getting loaded and they will get a photo of the quality assurance officer's sample that's been inspected and taken from the bags...a lot of other companies don't have that system which we have developed and invested in."

Mr White said the plan for the next five years was to keep doing what they were doing and "not drop the ball" on their standards.

"It's really easy to get complacent so we need to continue to work on these relationships that we've got with our buyers overseas, keep working on the systems that we've got as a business and we are pretty keen to make sure that we're recruiting our staff locally," he said.

"One of the things that we like to pride ourselves on is that businesses like ours are not a dime a dozen in Australia. There's not that many processing sheds like ours and like a lot of secondary industries in Australia multi nationals are buying them out so there's not too many family owned businesses like us left."

Mrs White said they were extremely fortunate to have wonderful staff.

"We do a lot with only a few people and they are all very experienced and really good at their jobs, we've got a really great team," she said.

The Whites also farm 404 hectares (1000 acres) in the Callide Valley growing mungbean, chickpea, wheat, millet and cattle.