A GROWING customer base in Europe, a low Australian dollar and increasing domestic sales are helping Naracoorte Seeds flourish.
Naracoorte Seeds and its export arm South Australian Seed Marketers have achieved significant growth in the past two years, with exports steadily increasing to account for about half of all sales.
While the company has more than 400 seed types available domestically, its export portfolio is focused on about 20 key forage varieties including lucerne, clovers and some grasses.
Major export destinations include the United States, the Middle East, China, Europe and South Africa.
Naracoorte Seeds managing director Jamie Tidy and his wife Peta have travelled to the European Seeds Association's Euroseed Congress the past two years and are starting to see the benefits of meeting in person with industry leaders.
Their trip to the 2019 conference in Stockholm in October was partially funded by a South Australian Export Accelerator grant.
Jamie likened the Euroseed experience to speed dating - a number of fast-paced meetings with businesses from across Europe - which had led to exports to Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France and The Netherlands.
"We sold quite a few containers while we were over there," he said.
"Export-wise, you don't necessarily need to have a huge team of sales reps. The people overseas just want reliable supply and a genuine relationship and we think there's a lot more opportunity within our region."
Lucerne seed has been a big growth area for Naracoorte Seeds in recent years and accounts for almost half of the company's exports.
Saudi Arabia is its biggest lucerne customer, where it is grown in the desert under huge centre pivot irrigation systems fed by underground aquifers.
The lucerne is then cut into hay and fed to cows housed in enormous air-conditioned dairies.
While lucerne has helped drive export growth for almost a decade, Naracoorte Seeds has been exporting SA seed since 1989.
One of its early export success stories was selling significant amounts of Haifa white clover seed to China from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s to green the city of Beijing ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
Jamie said the lower Australian dollar, which has fallen from $US1.05 in 2013 to $US0.68 now, had made Australian seeds significantly more competitive on global markets.
His business partner Joshua Rasheed has been in Argentina trying to establish a new export market.
"No one is putting any effort in there and in business if you zig when others are zagging or zag when they're zigging, then that's when opportunities come," Jamie said of the Argentinian venture.
"You can learn a lot by sitting down with people, find out how their business works, what their distribution network is and all those little things, rather than going in completely blind."
RELATED: Quick feed from grazing corn
Naracoorte Seeds was started in 1962 by John Clarkson and was bought by Jamie's parents Bob and Gini in 1980. Jamie and Peta joined the business in 2004, and began running it in 2009. The company has grown to about 12 staff members.
He said while the domestic market was potentially finite, it was also growing.
"We only do seed, we don't do fertiliser, we don't do anything else and we customise specific seed mixes depending on grower needs," Jamie said.
"The last two years we've had that growth and we've been able to sustain it both domestically and in export markets across a range of seed types.
"Thankfully we've been able to retain staff, which has allowed us to maintain those vital relationships out in the field."
This story was originally published on The Lead.
Start the day with all the big news in agriculture. Click here to sign up to receive our daily Stock Journal newsletter.
