After Christmas day harvest starts for Lenny O'Meara on the Dampier peninsula.
It's the season to pick gubinge, a bush fruit most commonly known by English name of Kakadu plum, and this year O'Meara and his family will be picking for their own business, Kimberley Wild Gubinge.
"Our family were harvesters for five years for a company based in Melbourne," O'Meara says. "We live remotely and we are 180 kilometres one way from the nearest major town and we were driving to Broome to deliver our fruit and along the way it's a bumpy dirt track and the fruit gets tossed around, plus in the wet season the roads are slippy and dangerous and we thought 'We are tired of doing this'. We decided we could probably value add and form our own company and start processing the fruit."
O'Meara and his partner Jacinta Monck started Kimberley Wild Gubinge two years ago to harvest the fruit, process it and then market and sell the finished product which is a fine powder prized for its vitamin C content.
"We decided to put all our money into machinery and take the big leap," says O'Meara.
They used the $30,000 from the years harvest to buy a dehydrator, milling machinery, pulping machine and deseeding machine.
Last year the fledgling business completely sold out with a turnover of $35,000.
"It wasn't a huge amount because we were restrained with the amount of fruit we had," says Monck. "We are also now buying fruit off other local people."
The Murra Program
O'Meara who describes himself as "from the Bardi mob" is hoping to continue to develop Kimberley Wild Gubinge as part of a partnership announced this week between credit card giant Mastercard and First Australians Capital, an organisation committed to enabling Indigenous entrepreneurs and enterprises.
The partnership will enable Aboriginal entrepreneurs from up to 30 businesses to access the Murra Program at Melbourne Business School from January 1, 2018.
The entrepreneurs will access a series of master classes at the MBA level, as well as year-long access to industry-specific mentorship opportunities and networking.
Jocelyn King, chief executive at First Australians Capital, says the partnership with Mastercard will help connect Aboriginal entrepreneurs with a world-class program and help grow sustainable and purposeful businesses.
"Our people have been in business for over 60,000 years, the original innovators of the sharing economy," she says.
King points to research by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at Australian National University which found Indigenous businesses are 100 times more likely to employ other Indigenous people which presents further opportunity to close the economic gap for Indigenous communities.
Richard Wormald, divisional president of Australasia at Mastercard, says historical policies in Australia have had a significant impact on the ability of Aboriginal Australians to grow wealth and start businesses.
"Owning a business is a powerful way for an individual to take control of the economic future of their families and communities," he says. "This is especially true in remote Australia where many ideas begin but the opportunities from local economies are small."
Eighty per cent of businesses funded to attend the program are led by women, and Wormald says Indigenous women have a particularly important role to play as entrepreneurs.
"Providing diverse experiences, access to varied cultures and different points of view are at the heart of innovation," he says. "Women bring a unique perspective for their customers, and their involvement in these kinds of programs forges a pathway for their children and other members of the community to follow."
The program is open to applicants from all parts of Australia, with organisations including Social Ventures Australia, Indigenous Business Australia, Supply Nation and Indigenous chambers of commerce working in partnership with FAC to identify candidates who can benefit most from program participation.
Long-term employment
O'Meara hopes being a part of the Murra Program will provide a boost to Kimberley Wild Gubinge.
"It will help our business grow and also give me some insight into running a business," he says. "I want to develop my accounting skills, I've always been interested in numbers and making sure we are growing in the right direction."
The aim is for Kimberley Wild Gubinge to triple production and sales and O'Meara says the business is tapping into a growing interest in bush foods driven in part by Noma's opening in Australia which featured fresh gubinge on the menu.
"This year we have our new processing facility and are hoping to go into full-scale production," says Monck. "We've just opened our online shop and I think having the e-commerce side of our business will help us. For us it is about creating a market as well. We are not in a position yet to sell large amounts wholesale to pharmaceutical or super food companies we are interested in creating a really premium product."
The three-year plan for Kimberley Wild Gubinge is to grow to employ local people in the processing side, not just as harvesters.
"That's really important for us and it will create long term employment not just the seasonal employment of the harvesting," says Monck.
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