Lismore's Norco ice cream factory opens after $100 million rebuild from flood damage
Almost two years after it was gutted by a record-breaking flood, a farmer-owned ice cream factory in the northern New South Wales city of Lismore is back in full production.
The Norco factory remains on a flood-prone site on the bank of the Wilsons River, but this time the design is different.
Chief executive Michael Hampson said 130 people were now working in the factory, which is churning out more than 500,000 litres of ice cream a week for the national market.
"There's been a lot of people that have had the shoulder to the wheel, done the midnight hours over an extended period of time to get this factory operational," he said.
The rebuild has cost around $100 million, with the NSW and Commonwealth governments providing financial sweeteners totalling $46 million.
The factory redesign includes an electronic engine room perched high above record flood levels, and a submarine-style room where ice cream vats holding millions of litres of product are stored.
Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the rebuild was an opportunity to build back better.
"We know Lismore is a flood-prone town," he said.
"It's so important for this town's morale, the region's morale, to have these visible signs of progress and there is nothing more visible than the Norco ice cream factory.
"We have to take the opportunity to build back better and increase the resilience of this factory."
Farmers welcome new-look factory
Dairy farmer and Norco director Paul Weir suffered $3.5 million in financial losses from the February 2022 flood, including 110 cows and calves which were washed away in flood waters.
The 51-year-old from Tuncester said it was a huge relief to see the factory reopen in Lismore.
"From a farmer co-operative point of view, there's no way that we would have had the money to rebuild," Mr Weir said.
"Our whole farmer base had just been smashed with the floods and extended wet weather.
"There was a lot of worried nights, will it or won't it go ahead?
"Until they [the government] finally came out and said they agreed to fund it, then the pressure went off everyone's shoulders."
Bronwyn Herbert, ABC Rural, 24 November 2023.
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NSW agriculture scientist's research leads to disease-resistant kikuyu grass for commercial export
A last-minute rescue of seedlings from a dumpster has led to the development of a disease-resistant commercial grass variety, set to be exported around the world.
Key points:
Kikuyu grass is prone to fungal diseases and has sensitivity to the herbicide glyphosate
Farmers say the new variety has the potential to be a game-changer for the tropical dairy farming industry
A commercial seed company has purchased the crops plant breeder rights for the variety
For retired agricultural research scientist 78-year-old Bill Fulkerson, who was offered the plants nine years ago, the new variant has been almost a decade in the making.
"Somebody rang up and said they were going to dump 1,600 kikuyu lines down at the tip unless I wanted them," he said.
That kicked off a research program in 2014 trying to invigorate and replace substandard commercial grasses used for tropical agriculture, particularly the dairy industry."
Kikuyu grass was first imported to Australia in 1919 from the Belgian Congo as cuttings and used in tropical agricultural regions.
It is widely used across NSW's Northern Rivers region and parts of south-east Queensland for feeding cattle. But the grass has its own set of problems, including fungal diseases and sensitivity to the widely used herbicide glyphosate.
Dr Fulkerson was motivated to produce a kikuyu variety that was resistant to what's known as 'kikuyu yellow' and also black spot on the leaf, both of which the cattle refuse to eat.
Export opportunities
Commercial seed producer, Nick Eykamp, said his company had purchased the Fulkerson variety's plant breeder rights, which gives the holder exclusive marketing rights for a set period.
"A line with superior benefits than the older kikuyu was worth getting hold of and trying to get the seed produced and out into the market," he said.
Mr Eykamp said the seed had real export opportunities, mainly for Europe.
"Everyone's been planting the same variety for 30 years and something that has disease resistance is a benefit for everyone," he said.
Mr Fulkerson said the Dairy Industry Group helped support the project by planting seeds in the paddock and testing if laboratory results could be replicated in the real world.
"We wouldn't have achieved it without the farmers," he said.
Dairy farmers buoyed by opportunity
Ken Bryant, who milks 250 cows at Bexhill, near Lismore, was involved in the trials.
In autumn, he planted 20 acres of the new variety. "The increase in yield is 24 per cent, which on top of the disease resistance, is such a bonus," he said.
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Source: Bronwyn Herbert, ABC North Coast, 17 June 2023