It has undergone several expansions already but the latest multi-million dollar investment at Southern Cross feedlot at Tintinara will result in it become a massive asset to the state's beef industry.
Last month, work to double the capacity of the state's largest beef feedlot from 15,000 to 30,000 head was completed by its owners, Thomas Foods International.
There will also be big benefits for graingrowers too, with the feedlot requiring 350 tonnes of grain a day, when it is full of cattle.
The feedlot has come a long way since former owners the Vogt family began feeding a few steers and heifers for the domestic market about 30 years ago.
Soon after, TFI bought out the Vogts to become the sole owners and renamed it Southern Cross.
The Thomas family have also put together more than 16,000 hectares of land surrounding the feedlot to run a breeding herd, background cattle and produce hay and silage.
TFI manager of investment and strategy Tom Davies and feedlot general manager Tom Green say the expansion has been in the pipeline for more than five years and is a natural progression with the company's growth in overseas markets.
It is also well timed with TFI's state-of-art Murray Bridge beef abattoir set to open later in the year, following a fire in 2018.
RELATED
"It was always the intention to continue to strengthen our grain fed business. That is a trend we are seeing across the whole country with vertically integrated companies wanting to secure more consistent supply of grain fed beef," Mr Green said.
"As a business, we are really positive about the long term outlook of for red meat, particularly grain fed beef for Australia - it suits our climate and makes total sense."
The ambitious project, which began in April 2021, has had more than one million metric tonnes of dirt, much of it hard limestone, removed from the side of the hill.
Ninety-five new pens were constructed with watering points and feed bunks mirroring the existing pens.
All of the pens have shade cover and bedding straw will be put down during winter months to add to the comfort of the cattle.
Mr Davies says it took marginally longer to complete, due to COVID delays and wet weather, but the first of the cattle entered the feedlot last month.
"We hit some hard rock but the trying conditions were more due to it being so wet - the local contractors did a great job," he said.
SA's South East and western Vic are the key procurement areas for their cattle, which are fed for a minimum of 150 days and presently processed at O'Connors at Pakenham, Vic.
Mr Green sees them continuing to "push aggressively" into these high rainfall areas to find quality cattle for Southern Cross.
"The industry is growing rapidly not just us," he said.
There is expansion throughout with the cattle on feed numbers consistently holding above one million, with the national cattle herd growing we are going into a cycle where we are going to have access to good numbers of cattle."
Mr Green says the "sweet spot" for feedlot entry is likely to continue to be 380-450kg cattle but expects they will also be more active purchasing lighter cattle to put through a growing or backgrounding phase.
TFI beef manager Petar Bond says their initial focus will be Angus cattle but they may consider other British-breed crosses in the future.
"The demand at the moment is for Angus cattle and we are blessed to be surrounded by Angus breeders but we are not saying no to anything," he said.
"It will take time to fill the new pens with Angus cattle but once it is full, it will just be replacing stock going out. There is enough stock in the district to achieve."
Mr Bond says there are many positives for their suppliers, including a state of the art facility, strong market for their cattle and some animal welfare benefits with cattle not having to be trucked up to 2000km to interstate feedlots.
One of the big considerations in the feedlot expansion, according to Mr Green, is procuring enough high quality grain, hay and byproducts year round, something he is confident about.
"The growth of this site has helped a lot of the area and is already really underpinning some of our graingrowers but we will also have to go further afield and really be a prominent domestic end user of grain, which is really good for competition," he said.
TFI has been leasing the Viterra storage site at Tintinara for the past few years but that will only represent about 10 per cent of annual grain requirement so Mr Green says they will need to look at other strategies.
The surrounding farms are expected to be able to supply the fodder, including 20,000t of cereal silage as well as irrigated lucerne hay.
The feed mill has undergone multiple improvements in the past decade but Mr Davies says their main focus has been changing from mixer trucks to stationary mixers and then feeding out more than 80t/hour of the mixed ration.
Stage 1 is complete but, as more cattle are on feed in next six to 12 months, Mr Davies says there is more to be done.
"Like the whole business, we are always looking at the most efficient ways of feeding because it is a key component to how this feedlot operates," he said.
Mr Green says all of their effluent is irrigated onto pastures and solid manures and composts are spread on crops.
They are reaping the rewards of this in higher yields and more water holding capacity on their sandy country.
Mr Davies says the credit must go to the dedicated staff, which have grown from 12 in 2015 to more than 25, and their high standards.
Mr Green believes it is a case of "you get out what you put in".
"We don't compromise on our commodity quality, we are really strict on what we feed our cattle and are always analysing what cattle we put on feed, especially the longer feed cattle," he said.
