DAIRY industry icon Frank Beauchamp has been honoured with an award recognising his "exceptional service to the dairy industry".
At the recent 2014 SA Dairy Awards, he became the recipient of the Brenton Higgins Memorial Award.
Mr Beauchamp was born into a dairy industry family. His grandfather started milk-processing cooperative Beauchamp Brothers, later AMSCOL. He left school and started working at AMSCOL, becoming managing director before it was taken over in the mid-1970s.
After finishing his time there, Mr Beauchamp and his wife Judith moved to Mypolonga and bought a dairyfarm, eventually milking 300 cows.
"It was a huge change, from processing to producing milk," he said. Mr Beauchamp had "never been closer than 100 metres to a cow", and it was eye-opening to see the industry from the other side.
After spending almost a decade as farmers, the couple returned to Adelaide, with Mr Beauchamp eventually taking on the manager's role at herd-improvement group HISCOL. Following 10 years there, he tried retirement for six months before becoming president of the SA Dairyfarmers Association.
While he was in that role, the dairy industry underwent deregulation.
"It was a difficult and traumatic time," Mr Beauchamp said.
"I would go with (then SADA chief executive) Chris Luz-Raymond and later Ken Lyon, spending one or two days every week for months and months in Melbourne negotiating a disappointing deregulation of the industry," he said.
"It's disappointing what's happened to the industry since deregulation.
"SA farmers feel deregulation should have been done in a different way but we weren't able to convince the different states."
Mr Beauchamp says his experience on both sides of the industry, as a processor and farmer, helped in his roles at HISCOL and SADA.
He eventually retired again, and this time it stuck - but he still looks fondly on his time in the industry.
"I love the industry and the people in it," Mr Beauchamp said.
He says he has a tremendous amount of respect for the work SADA is doing, particularly its new move into selling SADA-branded milk. "It's a terrific move and could lead to big things in the future," Mr Beauchamp said.
He is "thrilled" by the recognition of the award.
"After so long retired, it was very greatly appreciated," he said.
* Full report in Stock Journal, August 21, 2014 issue.
