Australians are eating more eggs than ever before and big Queensland producer Sunny Queen Farms has found a way to make the egg menu even more appealing.
Since 2006 the farmer-owned company has been building a value-adding strategy that now includes egg-based meals served up by quick service restaurants, airlines and even in defence force mess halls.
On Friday the company officially opened a $40 million plant – the only one of its kind in Australia – at its headquarters at Carole Park, near Ipswich.
Sunny Queen’s “meal solutions” facility has been cranking up its output for the past 18 months.
It now makes 1100 tonnes of omelets, fritters, crepes, frittatas, and scrambled and poached eggs a year.
The ready-to-serve range, which also extends to “sweet bite” double chocolate treats, sells into Asia, too.
Fully-cooked egg meals, snap frozen and flown direct from Australia, provide a comforting level of food safety assurance for Casino operators in Macau or catering venues in Hong Kong in a region where egg production and storage standards can leave considerable room for improvement.
Sunny Queen previously outgrew two other food manufacturing plants on the Gold Coast and at Yatala in Brisbane as its product range and customer base expanded.
Managing director, John O’Hara, said the company recognised a decade ago it should diversify the business.
It studied US and UK product alternatives to help work out how to break away from relying on the shell egg and egg pulp markets.
Starting with no customers, but a good concept in mind, it initially targeted hospitals and aged care facilities, gradually extending the sales and product range to hotels, cafes and workplace catering services.
“We’ve developed a few bespoke processes unique to our operation and unmatched by our competitors – our poached eggs are quite an improvement on what’s done overseas,” Mr O’Hara said.
Sunny Queen is Australia’s largest national egg brand and one of Australia’s top three producers.
It grew from Queensland marketing board origins in the 1930s, adopting its current brand name in 1969.
Egg quota holders were given direct ownership of the business when the marketing authority was deregulated in 1994.
It’s current owners, the Hall and McLean families, who have farms on the Darling Downs, have since increased their majority shareholding to take full control of the business.
Every year about 840 million eggs (70m dozen) are sourced from more than 3 million hens roosting on the company’s two major farms at Millmerran and Pittsworth, plus another eight supplier farms in Queensland, four in Victoria and two in NSW.
The new 2200-square metre meal solutions plant, opened by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, sits alongside the company’s distribution centre and head office, all now co-located on a site with plenty of room for expansion as value-added markets grow.
Mr O’Hara said the innovative site and it’s popular products were “testament to the staff who work here, and a commitment to research and development helped by the Queensland government”.
“Our business has flourished in Australia and in export markets because we can deliver good quality, tasty, safe and nutritious options to the foodservice market,” he said.
“We’re now a world leader in producing a safe, convenient and tasty food from one of nature’s most nutritious products.”
Mr O’Hara said eggs were more than just “a big vitamin pill”, they were “probably the cheapest form of protein on the market”.
Last year Australians ate an average of about 230 eggs – up from about 210 in 2013.
Value added opportunities were also helping open Australia to new markets overseas, Mr O’Hara said.
Sunny Queen saw good opportunities locally and offshore egg-based finger foods – everything from canapes and quiches to dim sims and pies.
“We’ve now got the capability to look at a big variety of lines.”