Limestone Coast Seeds acquires second site to grow storage, processing

The purchase of the former Tatiara Seeds site in the town's industrial estate by owners Greg and Naomi Excell will boost its storage and processing capacity by 60 per cent ahead of the 2024 lucerne seed harvest.

Mr Excell had been managing the original Bunker Road site for another company for six years when the opportunity came up to purchase the business, which has 5000 tonnes of storage capacity and three processing lines, in November 2021.

At the time he admits they were concerned it may have been a seasonal business but he says in the last couple of years they have been busy year round packaging lucerne seed, clovers and medics as well as cereals for food grade products and forage grains.

Their workforce has also grown from 12 to 18 full time staff and eight casual staff during the main processing season.

"A concern I had was how we were going to maintain employment for staff in the quieter months but it has been much more consistent than I first anticipated," he said.

"We knew we would be busy from January to June but in the last couple of years we have hardly stopped throughout the winter months.

"There is a lot more on-farm storage now and people are changing their grain marketing holding some back at harvest."

Lucerne seed is the main crop they process- not surprisingly since 80 per cent of the nation's production comes from within 100 kilometre radius of Keith.

About half of this is packaged for the domestic market with the rest packed into shipping containers for export to countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United States, Argentina and South Africa.

The business has also processed seed from as far afield as NSW.

Mr Excell says at the new Stirling Road site they will focus on faba beans and broad beans along with lucerne seed. The equipment on site includes a colour sorter and a de-stoner, however, Mr Excell has already started to increase the efficiency of processes at the site.

"We need to modernise the new site and I want to utilise what I have learnt from here and my overseas travels," he said.

He says finding enough storage at harvest is always a challenge which the additional storage shed and silos will assist with.

"Everyone is locking up their paddocks at similar times because of the lucerne seed wasp." he said.

"Years ago it may have been over two months ago. Now it is all happening within a month from start to finish," he said.

Despite Limestone Coast Seeds' success Mr Excell says there is one area they have no plans to venture into, trading seed.

"I think there are enough seed marketers out there and I don't want to ruin the relationships I have with them," he said.

In the past 30 years Greg Excell has worked in most areas of the South East seed industry from the production line to receivals to now owning and managing Limestone Coast Seeds at Keith.

He says this has given him the experience to revolutionise the plant and equipment set up, to optimise clean out yields and achieve excellent results for his clients.

The seed cleaning technology has not changed too much during this time according to Mr Excell, especially the separators used, although the majority of bags are now bulka bags instead of 25 kilogram or 50kg bags.

There was still enough throughput though to warrant the purchase of a Verbruggen Palletizer from the Netherlands last year which can stack up to 14 bags a minute.

This eliminates the need to manually handle every bag.

"Demand dictated that we put it in. In the last 12 months we packaged 120,000 bags compared to 50,000 the year before," he said.

It has been a lot of hard work but Mr Excell says it has been amazing to see how far they have come.

"We have been able to do this from the bottom up which I am pretty proud of," he said.

"The people I work with and the clientele I have gives me a lot of confidence about the future too."