A-B-CHEESE:

Jane Bennett is one of Tasmania’s most successful entrepreneurs and one of many women around Australia who have grown a small, niche food business into a successful business.  She was Presdient of the Tasmanian Rural Industry Training Board, on the Executive Committee of the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, a member of the National Food Industry Council, 1997 Australian Rural Woman of the Year, 1998 Young Australian of the Year and last year’s Tasmanian Telstra Business Woman of the Year. She was appointed to the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for a five year term in June.  And she’s still only 42!

Earlier this year she left her role as head of the family business, Ashgrove Cheese, at Elizabeth Town (between Launceston and Devonport). This article is updated, but based on, a 2004 interview by Bonita Mersiades in a book profiling Australian women running niche, small food businesses entitled ‘Women of Taste’.

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Jane Bennett used to be embarrassed about what she did.

“I had no desire to be a cheese-maker - at first. I became interested when I had some work experience as a cheese-maker in England. Until then, I was passively following my father’s grand plan.”

Jane Bennett says her father was “obsessed” about value-adding to the dairy farm he co-owned with his brother by making cheese.

“I was brought up at a time when university was an expectation in my peer group and, although I went to college (what is now Melbourne University’s Gilbert Chandler campus), being a dairy technologist wasn’t seen as a ‘proper qualification’. Amongst farmers, dairy farming was seen as the lowest of the low: we’re called the ‘shit-kickers and tit-pullers’.”

“I thought about studying genetic engineering but I passively went along with my dad, so I found myself at Gilbert Chandler. I was isolated from the beginning. “I was the only student not working for a dairy company. I was the only female in a class of 18. I was the youngest, just out of school. I didn’t know a pasteuriser from a spray dryer. I knew nothing. And I was the only one there not in paid employment.”

Despite that, Jane survived the study and returned to the family farm to work for nine months to save enough for travel to the UK. She spent the next two years working in Farmhouse Cheese operations in Lancashire, courtesy of contacts of her father.

“It was fantastic because I was thrown in at the deep end but the owners also let me run with it. They were quite happy for me to look at more than just making the cheese – which was challenging enough – but also at how to improve systems.

“I also did some development work for them on new ways of making cheese and some packaging R&D for supermarkets, all of which was invaluable experience for starting up our cheese business at home.”

She came home ready to assemble a new production plant at Ashgrove Farm, full of second-hand equipment.

In the years Jane had spent at university and learning cheese-making ways in Lancashire, her father and uncle had quietly but purposefully purchased second-hand cheese-making equipment from around the country, in preparation for her return when they planned to build a factory.

“It was a six year plan from when I started doing the course to when we commenced cheese production,” she says.

“They had a limited budget, so they built the factory and then filled it with antiquated equipment.”

She remembers the very first day cheese was made in the Ashgrove Farm factory – 29 November 1993 – and describes it as “the most terrifying day of my life.”

“I was using second-hand equipment which was a mish-mash of things. I hadn’t used equipment like this before and I was running blind.

“I was absolutely terrified about whether I could do it and I had no-one to hold my hand or guide me. I had the hopes and aspirations of my father and uncle to meet.

“I was a nervous wreck.”

But it worked.

“As soon as I started making cheese, and realised I wasn’t just a cog in a wheel but I could influence what was going on. I loved it! I was passionate about it from that day.”

So passionate, in fact, that Jane wouldn’t let anyone else come into the factory.

“It was my baby. It took 14 days for me to let someone else even wash the moulds,” she laughs.

Jane made every vat of cheese at Ashgrove Farm until the end of 1998 when her younger brother, Richard, took over as cheesemaker.

“We really were not very strategic until my time was freed up a bit. After that, we put time and effort into thinking about our market, what our brand image is and labelling.”

In 1994, Ashgrove Farm Cheese also developed facilities to attract tourists.

“The idea was that ‘we had a bit of cheese, let’s let people watch us make it, and we’d flog some to them as well’.

“It didn’t take off for five or six years but it’s our best marketing tool. We just didn’t appreciate how important it is and what potential it has.

“People want to understand what you do; they want to watch the cheese being made; how it matures; taste it; and then be able to talk about it themselves when they go home.

“It’s the most positive form of promotion for a small brand like Ashgrove; that is, to offer a really good experience at the farm so people want to continue to buy the product when they get back home.”

Jane says key to the growth through visitors was undertaking practical measures such as re-locating the car park so it could be seen from the highway, putting up signage, offering refreshments and objects to purchase and building visitor toilets.

“I knew I’d be the one stuck with cleaning them, but we realised after watching long queues of people using the one staff toilet that this wasn’t a very good idea if we wanted to make the experience comfortable and enjoyable for people.”

For someone who confesses to having once been “embarrassed” about making cheese, Jane says she’s a “raving obsessive” about it.

Even though she’s not formally part of the business anymore, Jane says she still checks out  places she visits to see what cheese they have.

“I can’t see cheese without picking it up, sniffing it and feeling it.”

Further information:  www.ashgrovecheese.com.au