Moonta Gourmet Meats celebrates Murray Grey output

Mr O'Donohue has built his business up from virtually scratch, after purchasing it a little more than three years ago, and he puts through between two and four bodies of Murray Grey beef each week.

Moonta Gourmet Meats employs 14 staff, who are run off their feet in the busy butcher shop, but it wasn't always the case.

Not a butcher by trade, Mr O'Donohue confesses to having the skills of "half a butcher", and started out working in an abattoir, before working for butcher shops and, as a salesman selling meat to restaurants and hotels, he has come full circle.

"I got sick of the Adelaide life, saw the shop advertised and bought it, and worked by myself for the first few months," he said.

"When I first started, I was buying Yorke Peninsula beef from Adelaide, because I couldn't process it myself, so it would get killed in Strathalbyn, processed there and sent down to me in boxes broken up and ready to slice.

"Once I employed my own butchers, I started buying locally from Ashvell Murray Grey stud at Maitland, and now the only body beef I buy is Murray Grey.

"All their beef for the year they put aside for me, fatten it up and I buy the whole lot."

Mr O'Donohue said Ashvell were the only grainfed beef close by and, once he started buying Murray Greys to put through the shop, the quality could not be faulted.

"It is well finished and an overall great product," he said.

"When I worked for a small abattoir, we processed both Murray Grey and Angus cattle, and I can guarantee you that once you take the coat off an Angus or a Murray Grey, you can't tell the difference - they are nearly the same animal."

Mr O'Donohue is presently collaborating with the South Australian Murray Grey breed promotion group to market gourmet branded beef into Klose's Supermarkets in the Adelaide Hills.

"They (the group) are in the process of grain feeding Murray Greys on a larger scale so I can work alongside them and process for supermarket customers," he said.

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The group has established its brand, and is presently in negotiations with Klose's, to get 10 lines of premium cuts into the stores, including diced steak, stir fry, gourmet sausages and hamburgers, roast, rump, t-bone, porterhouse, scotch fillet and eye fillet.

"We've got to the stage where the cattle are ready to be killed," Mr O'Donahue said.

"We didn't want to commit to it and put cattle into a feedlot until we had the customer lined up to take the product.

"We currently have three feeding outlets - Ashvell Murray Greys, Mallbrae Murray Greys and Yarralinka feedlot (custom feeding) to make sure we have pure Murray Greys available on a long list.

"We are in the very early stages, and we wanted to get involved with someone small and intimate for starters, but I believe the sky is the limit."